Urban Birds

I don’t consider myself much of a birder, but on the flight from BWI to Vancouver, via Minneapolis/St. Paul I started reading “Subirdia” by John Marzluff and got to thinking it would be fun to count urban birds in Vancouver and Auckland to report back to book club.  The Adkins Arboretum book club is reading Subirdia for its February book. 

I left Easton a few days after the big snowstorm, Jonas, so I had put some extra bird seed out.  Although I didn’t do a formal bird count there, I can safely say that within the last two days I have seen the following.

Easton, MD - ~16000 people, downtown has lots of mature trees and shrubs in backyards and as street trees.

Chickadees

Juncos

Barred owl

Cardinals

Starlings

House sparrows

Mourning doves

Canada geese (flying overhead)

There were probably a couple other species too, but I wasn’t keeping track since I hadn’t started the book yet.

Okay, Vancouver birds in the order spotted.  Numbers could be low because we were downtown (lots of highrises) and it was raining and cold.

Crows

Seagulls (more than one species)

Pigeons

Chickadee

robins

Seagull in Vancouver

Canada geese, mergansers, mallards, buffleheads and some other ducks on the waterfront

And finally Auckland.  A city of 404,000 on the water on an island in the Pacific Ocean.  Included here is downtown and an urban suburb as well as a trip to a larger park.

Seagulls (more than one species)

Pigeons

House sparrows

Mynah

Eurasian blackbirds

Robin

Fantail

house sparrow in Auckland

This is what the house sparrows were waiting for!

Fantail (at a botanical garden adjacent to a large park, a native bird!).  There were a couple other birds at the garden too, unidentified). 

So my informal survey confirms some of the key points of the book about the ubiquity of some species but also some regional adapters. I’m only part way through the book but it’s well written and includes references to a lot of urban ecology studies.