December continues to be hot, dry and windy except for a brief cold front dropping the temperature to 11*F with a light snow and slick spots on road on Wednesday, December 7. 

From the OkBird List John Shackford reports on his snowy day in the back yard.

Before it started snowing the morning of Wednesday, December 7, John Shackford looked out the kitchen window and was surprised to see a couple of chipping sparrows where they throw birdseed from time to time. When he took a closer look, there were actually 7 of them. About 5-6 of them were fairly easily recognized adults in winter plumage because there was some reasonable suggestion of breeding season rufous still discernable in crown, etc., and 1-2 with the much more difficult to identify young-of-year plumage. The 7th bird was maybe 5-10 % "paler" than the other 6, and was probably a young-of-year (or at least not a readily ID’d adult). Whether this bird was a normal plumaged (young) bird, a different "race," or a slightly albinistic bird (maybe 5%), he doesn't know--but the extra "lightness" was distributed over the entire plumage, rather than being white all over or on individual feathers in a specific spot. The 1992 date guide (can't lay hands on newest guide) gives chippies in central OK until Nov. 25. So seeing 7 in the yard this morning (7 Dec. 2005) in southern Logan County (north of the OKC Count Circle) and only about 10 days before the OKC Count did get his attention!

About 25 years ago John saw one of the hard-to-ID young-plumaged birds on our OKC Christmas Count--a single bird. It was only after an extensive journey through numerous hoops of mental leaps and contortions--and extensive use of a field guide, if he remember correctly--that he finally decided that yes, this was indeed a young chipping sparrow and should be counted as such. He believes this is the only chipping sparrow he has ever seen on any of the 40 or so OKC CBCs that he has participated on. Therefore it has been a surprise to him that on several Wichita Mts. CBCs he has done in recent years, chippies are usually seen most every year, and usually in good numbers. And on a couple or so recent OKC CBCs, other counters HAVE seen them too. It's beginning to look suspicious--apparent warming trends in recent years due to greenhouse gases, a natural cycle, or add your own hypothesis is allowing more chipping sparrows to stay north of their previous geographic range--but probably not their previous "temperature" range.

After running errands, John came home and saw what he was sure was a winter wren (little bitty, dark wren, short tail) in the same area. He has had a winter wren before--probably the same bird--but nice!  And a couple hours after throwing seed out, 2 Fox Sparrows showed up. He has had a few to several most every year now, but it is always a fun bird to see up close.  Sure is fun to see what birds show up at "the feeder" when a snowstorm is blowing in! But at such times, you quickly realize--from the earnestness of the birds' feeding behavior--that it's very serious business for the birds. So it "works" for everybody--you and the birds will never get more value per birdseed pound than on such days!

The Oklahoma City Christmas bird count was held on a misty cool day Saturday, December 17th.  In spite of the weather it was one of the best counts conducted. 

In Piedmont the Greater Roadrunner was seen from December 3 to just before Christmas in my yard.  On December 10th there was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and 15 Eurasian Collared Doves.

On December 30th Joe Grzybowski passed by Lake Hefner for a short while. He saw lot of gulls and ducks, but not much diversity. Along the shore there were Killdeer, Least Sandpipers, three Common Snipe and one Dunlin. A small group of 6-8 Common Loons were off the east end of the dam.

However, fire continues to rage through Oklahoma.  By January 11, 2006 Federal aid was granted to 12 Oklahoma counties including Canadian, Logan and Oklahoma.  Since November 1, 2005 382,707 acres have burned in Oklahoma up to January 10, 2006.