[TN-Bird] Wrigley BBS Hickman-Maury-Williamson Cos.

From: Bill Pulliam <bb551@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "TNBird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Birds" <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 16:12:50 -0500
I ran the Wrigley Breeding Bird Survey route this morning (5/29/10),  
the 45th consecutive run of this route continuing its perfect record  
of having been surveyed every year since the inception of the BBS in  
1966 (obviously, not all by me as I was only 4 when the BBS began!).   
This is a rather diverse route running through woods, hills,  
bottomlands, fields, and small rural communities from near Wrigley in  
Hickman County, through the community of Fly in far northern Maury  
County, and finishing on Leiper's Creek Road in Williamson County  
just a few hundred yards shy of the Highway 840 construction zone.   
The species total was 75 likely breeders plus one migrant.  This  
latter species, a nice singing Mourning Warbler, was the only species  
I found today that was a first for the route.  At the very final  
stop, just before the timer ran out, I heard a Broad-winged Hawk  
call, the first time this species has been recorded for the route  
since 1984.  Just after the timer sounded, a pair of Broad-wings  
sailed in to view; of course only the one that called before the  
buzzer got to be tallied!

Most of my species totals were within the typical range for recent  
years.  I had zero flickers, the first "goose-egg" for them since  
1987 but there are never very many so it's not surprising.  Another  
tally that was considerably lower than usual was the number of  
passing cars; thank the washed-out bridges on Leiper's Creek Road for  
this small blessing.  My warbler tally was 13 breeders plus the  
Mourning; I missed Ovenbird and Hooded (neither is numerous in the  
area) but compensated for them by finding Cerulean and American  
Redstart.  Four species did have all-time record high counts; two of  
these were vultures: 6 Black Vultures and 20 Turkey Vultures.  This  
may to some extent be a function of the general increase in these  
species in middle Tennessee; but I think it had more to do with the  
25 minutes of detours and delays caused by washed out and excessively  
rough roads.  The vultures usually are only up and conspicuous for  
the last few stops; this year I began tallying them significantly  
earlier in the route because I was arriving there later in the  
morning than usual.  This huge sensitivity to small changes in route  
timing is one of the reasons that the BBS is not a very effective  
system for assessing numbers of raptors and vultures.  By next year  
the roads and bridges should be repaired (barring another 1000-year  
flood event...); we shall see if the vulture counts drop back.

If I had any worries about my middle-aged hearing, those were eased  
by my record tally of 38 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, one of the first  
sounds to go for most birders as their ears age.  There has been a  
general upward trend in the gnatcatcher counts since Steve Stedman  
began running the route in 1987, but this is one of those species  
with an especially large "observer effect" so extracting meaningful  
long-term trends requires fancy statistical analyses to account for  
this (as a side note, the observer effect applies to some degree to  
all species, which is why it is especially important for BBS routes  
to be run by the same observer for as many consecutive years as  
possible).  The final species I had a record count for was Pine  
Warbler, with a total of 5.  This bird was never recorded on the  
route at all until 2001.  Singles were found in 2005, 2007, and 2008;  
last year I had a total of 4.  This would seem to reflect a real  
increase in the species in this area.

And a final negative observation:  There has still not yet been a  
Eurasian Collared Dove recorded on this route.  They have not yet  
colonized ALL of middle Tennessee, though sometimes it does seem that  
way.

Bill Pulliam
Hohenwald TN
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[TN-Bird] Wrigley BBS Hickman-Maury-Williamson Cos.

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