2025 Tuckerton Christmas Bird Count Results

Newsflash from Christmas Bird Count Central: the results of the 2025 Tuckerton Christmas Bird Count are in. But before we get into this year’s results, let’s start off with a brief history of our count.  Our group covers the Tuckerton CBC, which originated with a single participant in 1967.  (😃)  The Tuckerton CBC was active from 1967 through 1986, when it was discontinued (😢). The count re-started again in 2004 (😃), but was halted after just two years (😢). Shortly after SOBG was organized in 2008, our group revived the Tuckerton count in 2010 (😃), and has spearheaded the count since then, led originally by compiler Linda Gangi, and for the past eight years by Morry Kapitan (👍). A map of our 15-mile diameter count circle and the 10 sectors that we monitor is shown below. Due to historical precedence, the areas of our circle that overlap with adjacent CBC circles (Barnegat CBC and Oceanville CBC) are covered by those groups.

OK, enough of the history….what happened this year?  The 2025 Tuckerton CBC, held on Dec. 20, 2025, went well, with 21 participants spotting 93 species. Our species total has been hovering in the mid-90s range for the past six years, even reaching 99 species in 2024, so we were hoping to finally crack into triple digits, but we were not helped by the weather this year.   The weather was pretty good on count day, with temperatures starting at 28 degrees in the morning (but somehow it felt much colder), climbing up to 41 in mid-afternoon. Unfortunately we had a nasty cold streak the previous week, so the fresh water ponds were mostly frozen, resulting in precious little open water for waterfowl. We added one new species that hadn’t been recorded on the count since SOBG re-started it in 2010: a Barred Owl that was heard calling near Lake Absegami in Bass River State Forest. We were happy to have three new participants join us this year and look forward to having you join us in future counts.

The CBC is not just about having a good time and logging the number of species, but also (and perhaps more importantly), we are documenting the number of individuals seen. This year thirteen species had new high counts. As always, it is not completely clear whether the positive numbers are due to increased presence of these birds or the amount of effort by dedicated and skilled birders; that analysis is best done by statistical experts on a larger scale than our circle. Perhaps the most interesting new high was set for Baltimore Oriole, which appeared on our count for the first time last year with a single individual, and this year eight Orioles were spotted in Tuckerton!  Other high counts were exhibited by a few species that tend to be found in large flocks: Common Grackle (1536 this year vs previous high of 417), Red-winged Blackbird (316 vs 257), House Sparrow (344 vs 178), White-throated Sparrow (240 vs 218), American Crow (42 vs 32), and Yellow-rumped Warbler (656 vs 579).   Red-bellied Woodpecker set a new high for the second year in a row (33 vs last year’s old high of 31). Other new highs were by American Wigeon (11 vs 9), Double-crested Cormorant (31 vs 17), Great Blue Heron (53 vs 44), and Cooper’s Hawk (5 vs 4)
. We extended our streak of having double-digit Bald Eagles to six years, with 16 eagle sightings this year.

With 93 species seen in the count, there aren’t too many misses. On the negative side, perhaps the most glaring count day misses this year were Red-throated Loon and Peregrine Falcon, each of which we see in ~75% of our counts, but those species have been missed for two consecutive years now.  Fifteen of our species this year had only a single individual, which is a bit scary, and gives an indication that the species count easily could have been much lower. With a little bit of luck and the help of our counting crew we still hope to finally break that tantalizing 100-species barrier soon.

Birders of all skill levels can participate and contribute in different ways in this global event, and can also do either full day or half days, so please consider joining us for the 2026 count , which is tentatively scheduled for Saturday December 19th (but that may change as we hope to switch to Sunday to avoid hunters). Many thanks to our thorough and reliable count compiler Morry Kapitan, and we’ll see you all in Dec. 2026.

A summary of the results since 2010 (when SOBG started sponsoring the Tuckerton CBC) can be found here. The tally of the results from each of our CBC sectors from this year can be found in this file.