By Jeremy Bensette

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Lakeshore Christmas Bird Count on January 3, 2026.

We had a great birding day with relatively comfortable winter conditions, safe roads, and some nice socializing with some participants attending the group breakfast and/or late afternoon dinner. While we did not experience last year’s strong wind, or rain/snow, the cold temperature and ice on Lake St Clair presented a bit of a birding challenge. Despite these winter conditions, we had another very successful count! See below for some highlight finds, and a complete list of birds found. 

We counted a total of 71 species (plus one additional count week sp.) and 13130 individual birds this year. This year’s species count appears to be the third highest ever (74 remains the highest from two separate previous counts: 2025-01-04 and 2009-12-14), and it is significantly higher than the 22-year average count of approx 60 species since this CBC was first recorded in year 2000. The great participation by 18 birders was surely a major factor in this year’s success.

One particularly exciting highlight was new for the all-time Lakeshore CBC list: 

Two Black-crowned Night Herons were found in Area 1. This is typically only a warm season resident in the area, and relatively scarce at that. A great find for the first time in this Christmas Bird Count! 

Other notable finds include: 

  • Snow Goose (3rd ever for count) 
    • American Wigeon (4th) 
    • Green-winged Teal (6th) 
    • Short-eared Owl (2nd)
    • Merlin (5th) 
    • Peregrine (5th) 
    • Tufted Titmouse (5th)
    • Ruby-crowned Kinglet (3rd)
    • Eastern Bluebird (2nd) 
    • Fox Sparrow (4th)

There were quite a few species with highest ever counts for this CBC. New highest counts include: 

  • Canada Goose (5506, prev high 5500)
    • Hooded Merganser (92, prev high 83) 
    • Cooper’s Hawk (13, previous high 10) 
    • Northern Harrier (9, prev high 4) 
    • Bald Eagle (36, prev high 23) 
    • Great Horned Owl (5, prev high 2)  
    • Red-bellied Woodpecker (19, prev high 17)
    • Downy Woodpecker (73, prev high 70) 
    • Northern Flicker (9, prev high 6) 
    • Merlin (3, prev high 2) 
    • Blue Jay (156, prev high 130)
    • Red-breasted Nuthatch (15, prev high 10)  
    • Hermit Thrush (3, prev high 2)

Perhaps the most surprising miss of this year’s count was Lesser Scaup, which has been found on 16 of the previous 21 Lakeshore CBCs. 

Thank you all for working together on a superb Lakeshore CBC! I look forward to another great count next year. If anyone would like to volunteer a space within the count circle to have an end-of-day compilation for next year’s count, we would be most appreciative. There is much time between now and then to figure this out.