This year’s West Palm Beach Christmas Bird Count proved to be like none I can remember in my 25-plus years participating. Doreen LePage said she had a good feeling at the start of the day. Wow, was she spot on!

The rare bird reports started coming early, and never stopped, it seemed– culminating early afternoon with a stream of birders rushing to Lake Worth Pier and Dreher Park, hoping to view reported rarities. Then, at the end of the day, counters enjoyed a compilation gathering that was the best attended in years, likely due to a different format with a dinner provided at sundown.

We credit overall excellent weather and the hard work and skill of our counters, for the lengthy list of good birds this year. The rarities helped boost our tentative total of countable species to 149, an increase over last year’s final total of 143.

Marcus Kelly and Meghan Frey stole the show at Lake Worth Pier, finding Masked Booby and Black-legged Kittiwake, both incredible birds for our area. I found one prior record of Masked Booby on our count, in 1985. To my knowledge, Black-legged Kittiwake has only appeared during count week, and once– Richard Crossley’s sighting last year.

Staying at the shore, Richard Crossley reported Parasitic Jaeger and Black Scoter at Boynton Inlet. Our records show this was just the fifth time on the count for Parasitic, the tenth for Black Scoter.

Gael Silverblatt and Laura Quinlan, at Snook Islands, got the Common Eider, which was another fantastic find by Marcus Kelly a couple days earlier. Our only other count record of this species came in 2013.

An additional phenomenal discovery came from Marcia Abrahams and Mary Dunning: Western Tanager at Dreher Park South, just the third time for our CBC, the last one in 2014. (On Monday, birders reported a second Western present at the same location.)

On the warbler front, two different teams scored Cape May Warbler. John and Chadda Shelly had 3 at Lake Ida Park, and Marcus Kelly and Meghan Frey one at Lantana Scrub Natural Area. Cape May’s can stay through winter in small numbers, and have been reported recently at several locations, but this is only the species’ fourth count appearance, the first since 1993.

Another great warbler sighting came from Carl Edwards’ team, finding a Blue-winged Warbler west of 441. We’ve seen this species just six times on the count, the last coming in 2014. Carl also heard and observed Whip-poor-will, before dawn while owling. We have a number of count records for Whip, but this was the first one identified since 2004.

Beto Matheus’ team produced Piping Plover at South Palm Park, Lake Worth. This is apparently the same individual Gael Silverblatt has seen for several years now at Snook Islands– the 7th count appearance for Piping.

Wakodahatchee teams, both morning (Walt Hackenjos, Ben Kolstad leaders) and afternoon (Chuck and Linda Hignite leaders) recorded ongoing rarity Neotropic Cormorant. The morning team had two individuals. Also the 7th time on the count.

Short-tailed Hawk (documentation required, per state compiler) was seen by two Loxahatchee teams (Sonia Bollinger and Carolyn Kline’s group, as well as Marcello Gomes, Kenny Miller, and Kyle Matera). The groups almost certainly had the same dark-morph bird, first identified and nicely digiscope-photographed by 15-year old Connecticut birder Will Schenck (Sonia and Carolyn’s team), while the bird perched on a Marsh Trail cypress!

In addition to the birds listed above, we had a number of other species seen by just one or two teams– many “saves” this year. Our count is truly a team effort. Although still tabulating, I can safely say each count team made important contributions to our numbers!

And, if great birds were seen on Count Day, why not during Count Week? Richard Crossley had 2 Cory’s Shearwater and an Audubon’s Shearwater. Marcus Kelly came up with Brown Booby. Marcus and Will Schenck separately reported Pomarine Jaeger. And, Pat Demko relocated Lark Sparrow.

While we’ve had an incredible list of rarities this year, we also had a few misses. And, numbers for some species so far seem very low. We’ll know more once we finish our tabulations.

We feel honored field guide author Richard Crossley joined our effort again this year. Also, we’re very privileged to have eBird/Cornell University benefactor Bill Macaulay join one of our teams.

I want to recognize David Smith of Palm Beach County Environmental Resources Management. As he’s done for many years now, David facilitates our access to county-owned land not yet open to the public. David makes sure the property is maintained and passable when our count team arrives. Thank you!

My thanks to everyone who helped in any way– counting or behind the scenes! A special thank you to Alan Summersgill for offering his church’s fellowship hall for the compilation. Then, Susan McKemy, Doreen LePage, and Anne Hochtor took the ball and ran with it, organizing and providing a fantastic meal. Alan and his wife Cherie also worked hard setting everything up for us at the church. Again a team effort– thanks!

My gratitude as well to Rick Schofield for taking on the chore of producing our updated count checklist, conforming with the new taxonomic order– not fun. Doreen LePage served as a sounding board for me on many count-related issues. And, I appreciate the count circle intelligence provided by Brian Hope, Alan Summersgill, Gael Silverblatt, and Bob Dieterich.

It was quite a day!