Date: 02/23/2001

Number: 1

Unprecedented winter numbers all over the province. I estimate 25,000+ birds wintering here, mostly along the Bay of Fundy coast in the south, but also up the east coast and right to the Bay of Chaleur in the north. They've finished off the bumper mountain ash crop of 200 and are now into "starvation" food, such as Japanese Barberry, Ornamental Crabapple, Juniper berries and Multiflora Rose hips. When they get REALLY, REALLY hungry, they will finally even eat the Highbush Viburnum, and the seed heads from Staghorn Sumac. Trouble is, if we get a late snow in April, there isn't going to be any natural food for them to fall back on. Their wintering cousins will have eaten it all.... Our winter birds are from Newfoundland and Labrador, local birds winter further south, but probably no further south than they have to go, likely mid-Atlantic states. Whereas we were seeing flocks of 150-700 birds earlier in the winter, the flocks are now breaking up, and more typically contain 10-25
with lots of singles and doubles.

Grand Manan Island, NB

Latitude: 44.4 Longitude: -66.5

Observed by:
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