[TN-Bird] BBS season 2009

I completed my fourth and final Breeding Bird Survey route for 2009  
last weekend; it's quite nice to have them all done only a week in to  
June.  I already posted about my most notable find (the Worm-eating  
Warbler in Obion County); just a synopsis here of the season as a whole.

Opening day of BBS season in Tennessee is May 27th, and on that day I  
ran the Campbellsville route in Giles County.  This is my most rural  
route overall, with the least vehicle traffic, so it seemed like a  
good choice for a mid-week date.  I just acquired this route last  
year in a bit of a rush, when I discovered that it was still  
unassigned and un-run with only a few days left in the season.  As it  
is only about 40 miles from my front door I arranged to dash out and  
cover it ASAP.  The way the BBS works, data is far more valuable when  
the route is run by the same observer over multiple continuous  
years.  So, when you volunteer to cover an orphan route one year,  
you've adopted it for the duration (much like when you feed a stray  
puppy!).    Last year I ran Campbellsville on July 1, by far the  
latest I have ever run a BBS.  I was interested to see the comparison  
between 2008 and 2009, when I ran it in late May.  Surprisingly,  
there was not a dramatic difference.  Numbers of woodland singers  
were slightly higher this year than last, but not markedly so and  
probably not to a statistically significant degree.  The only major  
change was the Orchard Orioles.  In July in 2008 I found none; in May  
2009 I had 9 of them.   One thing I found curious about this route  
last year was the relatively low numbers and diversity of wood  
warblers compared to the other routes I run in the western Highland  
Rim.  I had only 5 species as compared to the 12-16 I had come to  
expect in this area.  The historical data from the previous observer  
also showed this paucity of warblers; but there are often substantial  
differences in the individual biases between two observers (hence the  
need for data from the same observer year after year!\0 and I knew  
from past experience that I tend to bias on the high side for  
warblers.  This left me wondering if it was a function of the route  
or the late run date; 2009 data would tell.  Well, this year I only  
had 7 species of warblers, adding only a single Worm-eating and two  
Prairie Warblers to the 2008 list.  Apparently the Western Highland  
Rim "motherload" for Middle Tennessee warblers does not quite reach  
as far as Giles County!

Next up on the list were Wrigley and Collinwood.  This was my third  
year on both of these runs.  These routes are fairly similar, being  
forest- and warbler-rich runs through hill-and-holler country of the  
Highland Rim, with enough open farmland to add diversity and help  
wrack up impressive species totals.  I scheduled Wrigley first, on  
Saturday May 30, as it has more vehicle traffic issues and I was  
going to be in Dickson close to its start point over the weekend  
already.  The Wrigley route starts in Hickman County and travels east  
across the northwest tip of Maury County before ending a few miles  
over the line into Williamson County.  It has been run continuously  
since the inception of the BBS in 1966, with not a single missed  
year.  Ideally one is supposed to scout one's routes in advance to  
avoid having road construction, etc. issues come up on the count day;  
but in the case of these routes where the start points are less than  
an hour from my front door I forgo the scouting trip.  I just figure  
that if something arises on count day that I can't resolve on the  
fly, it would be simple enough to rerun the route a day or two later  
after checking with the Mothership in Pautuxent and working out a  
solution.  The Wrigley route has had some pretty significant road  
changes in its 43 years of existence, especially when the Natchez  
Trace Parkway was constructed and bisected it, causing quite a few  
stops to be relocated.  I narrowly dodged the bullet this year:  as I  
approached stop 50 (out of 50), I was presented with orange "ROAD  
CLOSED AHEAD" signs.  The barricades were sitting exactly at the  
point where the BBS route ends!  It seems that 840 construction into  
Williamson County has resumed and reached Leiper's Creek, after many  
years of delay.  Fortunately this will make no changes to the route;  
though who knows what it might do to the traffic issues?

The Wrigley route was its usual warbler-filled self, with a run total  
of 15 warblers and a hefty 79 species.  Some year the planets and  
birds will align just right and this route will break the 80 species  
mark!  The only disappointment was the absence of any audible or  
visible Cerulean Warblers at their usual haunts along Lick Creek or  
anywhere else on the route; however these were balanced by singles of  
Blue-winged Warbler and American Redstart, both of which are often  
missed.  I would be tempted to blame the missing Ceruleans on the  
fact that the February 2008 tornado cut across the route right at the  
spot where they have been most reliable recently; however there was a  
bird singing there last year still after the tornado so hopefully it  
was just bad luck this year.

I chose to run Collinwood on Tuesday, June 2nd.  This route often  
gets run on a weekday as the traffic is not too bad; though last year  
I ran it on a weekend and I have to say by comparison the passing  
cars were pretty annoying in parts this year.  I will probably try to  
move it back to a weekend for the future.  For this one we start out  
just east of the Natchez Trace Parkway in southern Wayne County, wind  
through the hollers eastwards into southern Lawrence County through  
"downtown" Westpoint and north of Loretto, and finish up in the high,  
flat, open farmland and hayfields of the barrens near Center Point.   
It has some memorable stops, such as the one in Westpoint that is  
almost right on the front porch of a friendly old lady who you hope  
has remembered to fill her hummingbird feeder; and the stop that is  
right in the middle of the Shoal Creek bridge with the Cliff Swallows  
swarming around you.  In the first stops it passes through large  
regenerating clearcuts that have reached perfect Blue-winged Warbler  
stage.  This year I tallied 7 of these beauties, along with 12  
Prairie Warblers and 25 Yellow-bellied Chats.  The shifting numbers  
of birds as the forests are cleared, regenerate, and close in again  
are one of the things the BBS is intended to document.  Sometime in  
the distant future these same stops will probably be recording  
Ovenbirds, Acadian Flycatchers, and Hooded Warblers again; of course  
by then I will have probably long since lost my hearing and passed  
the route on to someone else!    The missing Ceruleans from Wrigley  
were found at Collinwood, with singles at two stops.  One of these  
was heard from the aforementioned Shoal Creek Bridge, where there was  
also an American Redstart singing for the second time in three  
years.  The Barrens added only a single Dickcissel this year;  
sometimes they yield Loggerhead Shrikes or Grasshopper Sparrows but  
it's always hit-or-miss for these species.  All told I had 77 species  
including 14 warblers.

A curiousity -- after acquiring Campbellsville, I now run 3 of the 4  
BBS routes in this southwestern highland rim area.  It reminds me of  
the South Carolina Breeding Bird Atlas, where I wound up covering all  
the Georgetown County and most of the Horry County blocks myself for  
the same reason: paucity of local birders.  I'm not sure if this is a  
good thing statistically, but it does get these remote rural areas  
covered which is better than having missing data.  Of course the only  
local route I do not run is the one that begins only 9 miles from my  
front door: Lewis Forest.  I don't know who does cover this, but  
looking at their data for past years it is clear that route is in  
very good hands.

To finish out the season I made the long trek to the far northwest  
corner of Tennessee for Tiptonville.  This is the first Tennessee BBS  
route I acquired.  2009 marked my fourth year on it -- almost enough  
for some meaningful statistics to start coming from my data!  Though  
this route is cursed with heavy traffic on the early stops regardless  
of the day of the week (commuters on the weekdays, fishermen on the  
weekends), it is also probably the most exciting of my four routes.   
It begins on the delta flatlands north of Tiptonville just south of  
Black Bayou, then skirts right along the south shore of Reelfoot Lake  
before climbing the bluff in to the Obion County uplands.  In the  
Reelfoot portion you never know what might fly over, and up in the  
hills and creeks on the second half you never know what you might  
glimpse or hear.  Just in my four years I have come across unexpected- 
in-summer woodland birds there such as Worm-eating Warbler, Scarlet  
Tanager, and Broad-winged Hawk.  This is also the only BBS route I  
have ever broken the 80-species mark on (81 on 2007).  Over the  
decades the route has racked up a cumulative species list of 111;  
individual year totals usually run in the 70s so you can see how much  
year-to-year variation and luck-of-the-flyover-draw there is!

There was an additional factor this year that had me intrigued:  the  
extensive forest damage from the intense ice storm last winter than  
hit Lake and Obion Counties.  If you have not been to this area since  
the storm, be advised that the impacts are massive.  It looks very  
much like what I have seen near the coast in the aftermath of major  
hurricanes, except that it lacks the "blown sideways" effect. The  
branches and tops of all these trees were dropped straight down and  
remain piled in great heaps throughout the woods.  The trees are  
resprouting in that clumpy, stunty way that looks like the aftermath  
of a bad pruning job, just as you would see following a tornado or  
hurricane.  Overall I'd guess the tree canopy leaf area is reduced by  
an average of 50% or more across the landscape.  It is hard to say  
from just my one route what effect this tree damage had on the bird  
totals.  Overall the numbers for woodland birds seem lower than  
average; but there is always substantial year-to-year variation so it  
is hard to say much for certain.  My species total was 73, which is a  
bit low but not markedly so.  Tiptonville is the only Tennessee BBS  
route within the ice storm footprint, but there are many others in  
Kentucky that were also walloped by the storm.  I will be especially  
interested to see what happens over the next couple of years as the  
underbrush explodes in these opened up woods -- what might move in,  
and what might move out?  Will we see huge increases in chats,  
towhees, and catbirds?  Time will tell!

After a week and a half of getting up at 3:00 a.m., I finally have  
time to weed the garden again...

Bill Pulliam
Hohenwald TN



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