On the Patch: Yards Park 2015

2015 was a weird year birding on my dirty little patch of the Anacostia, Yards Park. As I've outlined in (too much) detail before, The Yards Park is my typical afternoon dog-walking-while-also-keeping-an-eye-out-for-birds location.

High Island it ain't. There are no trees, really, and only a few bushes here and there. Lots of gulls roost on the river sometimes, and other times it's barren, even when the nearby Potomac is covered in loons and grebes and whatnots. But that's what patches are, ain't they? You learn to know a place well enough and then even the most mundane birds, the slightest out-of-place "vagrant" becomes a big deal.

I moved to this area in March of 2014, so 2015 was my first full year birding at Yards Park. I hadn't looked at the numbers until today, and when I did I was surprised to see that even though I put in a lot of time with the ol' pup, I saw far fewer species this year than last.

In total, I saw 42 species at the Park this year, the last being a Common Yellowthroat back in September. I had only four new birds for the location: a Cooper's Hawk, American Kestrel, Downy Woodpecker (in the trees by the actual Naval facility), and a Black-crowned Night-heron.

In 2014, however, despite having a three month disadvantage, I managed 55 species.  34 of them were new to the park. (In my first ever visit, after a Nationals game in April 2013,  I managed a whopping 23 species, my biggest single checklist ever!

Would you like to see this represented graphically? Sure you would:

So what happened to make 2015 so light? I'm not quite sure. There was a real lack of birds on the water in 2015, unlike the winter of 2014 with it's huge grebe invasion. Red-necked and pied-billed grebes are all over the place in March 2014, but didn't make an appearance at all in 2015.  I also somehow managed to miss BOTH vulture species in 2015 (?! That can't be right!) And cardinal (!) And towhee. I don't know. Tough year.

But all you can do is keep trying. I just took Gibson for his first walk of 2016 and managed 13 species, including a spiffy Bald Eagle. Here's to many more in the months to come.

Breaking Records or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Patch or: A Pedestrian's Guide to the Unspectacular Birdlife of Yards Park, DC

In patch birding, it's all relative.  You're not after huge numbers, you're not expecting rarities. Instead, it's about really knowing a place, and learning its rhythms.  When you're stuck with a patch long enough, you learn to love it no matter how few birds there are.

And there aren't a lot of birds on my patch, Yards Park along the Anacostia River in DC. It's where I walk my dog most every day after work. Despite running along a big ol' river and featuring at least some greenery, I've only managed 62 species despite visiting a few times a week for a year and a half.  I dunno, that's not a tiny number, but it's less than I could get on a decent spring day at a park just up the river. (Also, it's enough to make me the hotspot leader by about 30 species).

But it's what I've got, you know?  And I love it. I especially love it on days like yesterday, a gray and dreary afternoon where I somehow beat my previous dog walking record and saw 17 different species.  Check out that list!  The clincher was a solo mourning dove that cruised overhead when I was back on South Capitol Street, almost home. My dog had no idea what I was yelling about.

Anyway, in honor of my record-breaking afternoon I made a quick. annotated bird finding guide to Yards Park. It's oriented South to North, which is the way I walk it, but it's a little confusing that way. It's displaying small, but you can click to enlarge. Or you can just not do that, and go on with your life.