More than most people, I enjoy solitude, especially when visiting wild areas. The sights, sounds and smells of nature are, in my opinion, best appreciated in the absence of human conversation. But twice each year, near Christmas and in the spring, I take part in the annual Audubon birding counts, established to monitor the status of regional bird populations.
Our group is assigned to rolling farmlands south of Columbia, between the Missouri River, on the west, and U.S. 63. We gathered just before dawn and set out to survey are region, winding along country roads and stopping at selected sites to look for birds. It was a cold, gray day but the birding was decent and most expected species were found; as usual, juncos, crows, robins, blue jays, cardinals, flickers and starlings were among the more common. We also saw red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks, a lone bald eagle, a variety of woodpeckers, yellow-rumped warblers, purple finches, swamp sparrows and northern mockingbirds; during our six hour excursion, forty species were tallied.
The highlight of today's count was the large number of cedar waxings. In most years, we see several flocks of these attractive birds, generally yielding a total of fifty or so. Today, we saw hundreds of waxwings; in fact, it was the most numerous bird on the list, even surpassing our tallies for juncos and starlings. Though the reason is uncertain, it is likely that these nomadic birds abandoned more northern parts of their range after recent heavy snows across that region.
