All-Time High Counts for Species Recorded on Christmas Bird Counts in Tennessee

Since the inception of the Christmas Bird Count in Tennessee in 1903, about 270 species of birds have been recorded on CBCs taking place at more than 50 locations across the state.  The highest count—or counts in the case of ties—for each species on a single CBC is listed below. The species names listed below are those under which the high count occurs in the Audubon CBC database; sometimes these names are not the currently accepted name of the species.  If you seek the original information in the online database, you must use the name listed below to find the record, and you must use the alpha code for the circle name (see rightmost column).

    The dates presented below were initially provided to me by the Audubon staff, but many of the dates have changed since that transferral of data took place.  Note: sometimes the date is Christmas Day (December 25), which should be viewed as a generalized date standing for the actual date which fell during the CBC period but which is not yet in the database; sometimes the date is the actual date of the count; and sometimes the date of a count is absent. Readers are encouraged to send in the specific date for generalized or missing dates if these are known.

    Some errors in the CBC database have been removed as a result of the creation of this page—e.g., the "high count" of c. 140 Belted Kingfishers from the Hickory-Priest CBC was determined to be an error; the "high count" of 534 Downy Woodpeckers listed for decades from the Hickory-Priest CBC during the 81st CBC was finally determined to be an error and corrected during 2009; and the "high count" of 112 Pileated Woodpeckers listed for the Ashland City CBC was determined to be an error.  However, other errors, either relating to high counts or not, no doubt still exist in the database. If you believe that one or more of the high counts below are inaccurate or if you know of any other errors, please contact me, so we can work out a way to correct the error.  SJS email—sstedman@tntech.edu

    Three new species for CBCs conducted in Tennessee were observed during the 114th season and are presented in bold-faced red below—Black-headed Gull, Say's Phoebe, and Yellow Warbler.  Species names in light-faced red are those for which the all-time CBC high count was tied or set during the 114th CBC season.

Table 1.  All-time high counts for species recorded on Christmas Bird Counts in Tennessee.

Acknowledgment: Kathy Dale and the Audubon staff extracted the CBC data and prepared the Excel spreadsheet upon which the above table is based.

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