Late-Winter Birds of West Virginia—Abundance

In an earlier post, I identified the top-10 most widely distributed late-winter birds in West Virginia based on information from the Great Backyard Bird Count. Today, I look at the top-10 most abundant species, again using GBBC data. As before, this analysis is based on 9 years worth of GBBC data (199802006), during which 2,763 checklists were submitted from West Virginia by volunteer participants.

The following are judged to be the 10 most abundant species in late winter in West Virginia based on the number of individuals reported on the 2,763 checklists:

European Starling 13,506 birds/year (44 birds/checklist)**
American Crow 2,783 (9.1)
American Goldfinch* 2,496 (8.1)
Mourning Dove* 1,580 (5.2)
Dark-eyed Junco* 1,502 (4.9)
Northern Cardinal* 1,368 (4.5)
Canada Goose 972 (3.2)
House Finch* 896 (2.9)
American Robin 873 (2.8)
House Sparrow 682 (2.2)

* Denotes a species that is also one of the top-10 most frequently recorded.

** 82.5 percent (100,283) of the 121,554 starlings recorded on the GBBC were found on a single count. Disregarding the results from this anomalous count, the abundance of European Starlings on West Virginia GBBCs drops to 2,363 birds/year, or 7.7 birds/checklist.