Phil,
Be careful what you call DC on a DC Christmas Bird Count. Today's count
circle includes parts of Virginia and Maryland. Of course there were no
count circles in 1916 but there were four CBCs called "Washington DC" that
year. This was back in the day when anyone could do a CBC just by taking a
walk and sending the list to Audubon. The area covered was given for each
of the counts. White-winged Crossbills were reported on two of the four
counts. 23 were reported on the count noted as "Woodridge, D.C., to Contee,
Md., thence to Bowie, Md." These birds were probably in DC based on other
reports. Then 21 White-winged Crossbills, including collected (Alexander
Wetmore was participating) were reported on the Washington DC count that
covered "Roslyn to Four-mile Run, and Oaks to Wellington, Va." These birds
were probably in Virginia. A fifth count was noted as "Berwyn, Md. to
Anacostia, D.C." No White-winged Crossbills here but they did find 127 Tree
Sparrows (talk about a change in status!).
White-winged Crossbills had been present since at least Dec. 10, 1916
and were noted as tolerably common through Jan. 16, 1917. Reference -
Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 42:46 and Stewart &
Robbins 347-348. And there are probably other notes from that winter that I
have not seen. There are two older reports of White-winged Crossbills
attributed to DC, one was Oct. 23, 1913 and the other a specimen taken
about 1864. Let me know if you find more and I can add them to my database.
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Phil Davis <pdavis...> wrote:
> Hi DC birders:
>
> On a related note, as a part of our historical canvass, we subsequently
> found that two flocks of WWCR were reported on the 1916 DC Christmas Bird
> Count!
> --
>
Bob Ringler
Eldersburg MD
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