Re: [cobirds] Historical perspective on Bohemians?

I want to thank everyone for sharing their amazing memories of Bohemian Waxwings in Colorado, particularly around the Denver-Aurora metro area. It seems one underlying lesson is that Bohemians were much more regular and common around Denver than they have been over the last twenty or thirty years. Perhaps these past decades have been a blip in the bird's natural history? Or perhaps this is a change--owing to changing populations, warming winters, or perhaps changing landscapes north of us? I guess time (and ornithologists, helped by our eBird reports) will tell. Nationally, the species' winter incursions into the upper Midwest and New England hasn't changed much over the past half-century, at least according to Birds of the World. A surge was documented in the 1970s, which is attributed to the banning of DDT.

I want to share one artifact from DFO's newsletter archive. (The archive is great, preserving old trip data on a month-to-month basis. Perhaps DFO members will one day enter this data in eBird?)

The January 1969 newsletter reports on the December 1968 Christmas Bird Counts around Denver. It sounds like it was a rather harsh month. Denver's count, organized by Hugh Kingery, faced snow all day. (I think this is the western count, not the urban Denver count.) Still, they recorded 92 species, one fewer than the Count's then-record set in 1967. This included 2,922 Bohemian Waxwings, then a record for this count.

The newsletter ends the CBC account with this curious note. I've bolded what stood out to me!: "Let's hope we don't face weather like this again for several years: Denver, snowing all day, while our astronauts shot off for the moon under blue skies. Idaho Springs: '~ 20-30 mph winds, snowing at higher elevations."

In December 1968, Apollo 8 became the first crewed spaceship to reach the moon. Strange to see this bit of historical trivia cached in a DFO newsletter!

- Jared Del Rosso

Centennial, CO

lonesomewhippoorwill.com

On Wednesday, February 1, 2023 at 12:20:42 PM UTC-7 Tina Mitchell wrote:

In 2007, the still-pretty-nascent Salida CBC reported 3,025 Bohemian Waxwings in and around town. As I recall, it was the high count for the state that year.  A tiny claim to fame for this lovely little mountain CBC.

 

Tina Mitchell

Then, Lakewood/Coaldale, CO

Now, Oceanside, CA

 

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