By Michel Gauthier
With the COVID restrictions finally out of the way, we are happy to say that an average of twenty-five birders participated in each of the four April Morning Bird Walks held by the Mississippi Valley Field Naturalists (MVFN). Finally free of eyeglass-steaming masks, our participants eagerly scanned woods and fields in search of anything that flies.
And the birds, as if they knew that this was the first birding events unrestricted by the pandemic in two years, showed up for the party. And boy, did they show up!
We set a record for the number of species, and we almost matched the record for the greatest number of birds, missing the mark by only 90 birds. And that’s not all: We recorded three species for the first time: Palm Warbler, Wilson Snipe, and Cooper’s Hawk.
You can see in the charts and table below that we have been recording the number of species since 2009, and starting in 2017 we included not only the number of species, but also the number of birds for each species.
We would like to thank all those who participated, and we look forward to continuing our effort next year!
| Species List 2022 | ||
| American Black Duck | Downy Woodpecker | Palm Warbler |
| American Crow | Eastern Bluebird | Pileated Woodpecker |
| American Goldfinch | Eastern Meadowlark | Purple Finch |
| American Robin | Eastern Phoebe | Red-winged Blackbird |
| American Tree Sparrow | European Starling | Ring-billed Gull |
| Belted Kingfisher | Golden-crowned Kinglet | Ring-necked Duck |
| Black-capped Chickadee | Great Blue Heron | Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) |
| Blue Jay | Hairy Woodpecker | Ruby-crowned Kinglet |
| Brown Creeper | Hermit Thrush | Ruffed Grouse |
| Brown-headed Cowbird | Hooded Merganser | Rusty Blackbird |
| Bufflehead | House Finch | Song Sparrow |
| Canada Goose | Killdeer | Swamp Sparrow |
| Chipping Sparrow | Lesser Scaup | Tree Swallow |
| Common Goldeneye | Mallard | Turkey Vulture |
| Common Grackle | Merlin | White-breasted Nuthatch |
| Common Loon | Mourning Dove | White-throated Sparrow |
| Common Merganser | Northern Cardinal | Wilson’s Snipe |
| Common Raven | Northern Flicker | Winter Wren |
| Cooper’s Hawk | Northern Harrier | Wood Duck |
| Dark-eyed Junco | Osprey | Yellow-bellied Sapsucker |
| Yellow-rumped Warbler | ||
