Yesterday Jerry McWilliams reported a single-day record of red-breasted mergansers at Presque Isle State Park: 46,600 birds!

Every fall Jerry conducts a daily waterbird count for several hours at Sunset Point.  On Friday he and Roger Donn watched “huge flocks [of red-breasted mergansers] flying in off the lake and concentrating north of Gull Point, later moving west in groups of 100 to 300 birds for the entire morning.”

Where did these birds come from and where are they going?   Red-breasted mergansers breed along the ocean and lake shores of tundra and boreal forests.  They spend the winter at the coast from Canada to Mexico or at the Great Lakes.  The birds Jerry is counting at Lake Erie have reached their final winter destination unless the lake freezes over.  If that happens they’ll move on.

How is Jerry McWilliams sure of these numbers?  For you and me the count would be quite a challenge but not for him.  Jerry’s an expert at identifying and counting birds.  He know the shapes of waterbirds, their flying style and habits.  Color hardly matters.   He uses a scope and estimates in groups.   I watched him do it for a brief time last weekend when I visited Presque Isle.  There were only 7,858 red-breasted mergansers that day and I thought that was a lot!

If you’re at Presque Isle looking for snowy owls, stop by Sunset Point and you can watch, too.

Read the count details for Friday December 6 are at this link on PABIRDS.

(photo of red-breasted mergansers in flight by lgooch on Flickr via Creative Commons License.  Click on the image to see the original)

p.s. This is more than twice the number of crows we’ve ever counted in Pittsburgh in the winter.