2011 has ended and with it the first County Quest, a yearlong friendly competition among Vermont’s 14 counties to count the most species in a year.
searching high and low for birdsRutland County tallied an astounding 216 species! While not the most (Addison County holds that honor at 249), we have much of which to be proud. An amazing 2,247 checklists were submitted to eBird for our county alone by a small, but dedicated and hardy, group of birders.
2012 marks ten years since eBird, a real time, online checklist program, was first launched. And we’ve come a long way! In 2001 188 species were observed in Rutland County and reported on 449 checklists. This year represents a new high in both categories. Our previous highs were 202 species in 2009 and 1,652 checklists in 2010. In that light this year's results are remarkable.
We are very fortunate in Vermont to have our own portal into eBird. We are grateful to the Vermont Center for Ecostudies for maintaining this valuable resource. If you haven’t done so already, plan to check it out soon for the latest in Vermont birding news. We also hope that if you haven’t used eBird in the past, you submit your first checklist in 2012. Click here to get started.
Some of this year’s highlights include:
- 26 species of waterfowl including all three scoters
- Red-throated Loon at Lake Bomoseen
- Golden Eagle, three reports, in Hubbardton, Rutland and Chittenden
- American White Pelican, a county first, at Kent Pond in Killington in May and again in November
- 12 species of shorebird including Dunlin and Red-necked Phalarope
- Laughing Gull, another first, at Lake Bomoseen
- Black Tern at Chittenden Reservoir and Kent Pond and Common Tern at Lake Bomoseen
- 29 species of warbler including Cerulean, Bay-breasted and Cape May plus both Blue-winged x Golden-winged hybrids (Brewster's and Lawrence's)
Click here to see the full list for Rutland County.