Dear Tweeters,
It is difficult to judge bird numbers without looking at data. When current events take an ugly turn, as they have of late, one might be led to falsely morose conclusions. A couple of wonderful days of fallout in the back yard might lead to a rosier view.
I just went through the data for the past ten years of birding in my yard, which is near Lyman in Skagit County. I have always birded my yard intensively in September, trying to pick up new yard-year birds in migrant flocks, and the effort this year has been no different.
My half-baked method of analysis consisted of finding the number of individuals found each September, from 2011 through yesterday, 16th September 2020. Then I divided this number by the number of birding sessions. Granted, some of those sessions have lasted longer than others; I will not take the time to figure out birds per hour, because that would take too long. Nor did I take the time to weed out any nocturnal birding sessions, although those were very few in number.
I was surprised by the results.
In 2011 there were 1552 individual birds recorded in 40 sessions, 38.8 birds/session.
In 2012 there were 827 individual birds recorded in 43 sessions, 19.2 birds/session.
In 2013 there were 1551 individual birds recorded in 122 sessions, 12.7 birds/session.
In 2014 there were 2313 individual birds recorded in 228 sessions, 10.1 birds/session.
In 2015there were 1085 individual birds recorded in 70 sessions, 15.5 birds/session.
In 2016 there were 1823 individual birds recorded in 51 sessions, 35.7 birds/session.
In 2017 there were 1909 individual birds recorded in 53 sessions, 36.0 birds/session.
In 2018 there were 2254 individual birds recorded in 32 sessions, 70.4 birds/session.
In 2019 there were 1936 individual birds recorded in 32 sessions, 60.5 birds/session.
In 2020 there have been 1874 individual birds recorded in 18 sessions, 104.1 birds/session.

Thus it appears that I have been seeing more September birds than usual in my yard this year than in any of the previous nine years. There has been a monstrous flock of European Starlings swarming around here of late. I can't remember if that has been the case in the past few years, but I suppose that this flock alone could tip the data in favor of a larger birds/session number for this month.
House Finches have been present here in somewhat larger numbers than usual. Eurasian Collared Doves and Anna's Hummingbirds have also been present in somewhat better numbers than usual. Nothing else comes to mind.
The first Oregon Junco of autumn showed up a few minutes before I started crunching these numbers this morning. I haven't found any rare yard birds this month, but I will sally forth into the smoke in a few minutes and see if I can find one!
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch

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