here we go again!

2018.  New year means all my year stats go back to 0.  Again my target for 2018 is 300 bird species for Texas.  My goals for the year are undecided so far.  One thing I like to do is to see how many species I can get in each county.  There are a group of people called the century club which means they want to get 100 bird species in 100 different counties.  That would be a fun goal if I had more of a time commitment. Currently I only bird on Saturdays and occasionally on Sunday if we are out of town or something.  I usually devote my Sunday to church and rest.  So far I have 9 counties with 100 or more birds:

Galveston-266
Jackson-222
Harris-206
Chambers-198
Matagorda-183
Brazoria-180
Calhoun-133
Jefferson-129
Fort Bend-121

Most of these are coastal counties that are not to difficult to get 100  and some are counties that I am able to bird often because they are close to my Galveston county home. I guess the next milestone for me would be 100 birds in 10 counties, but that should not be too difficult since I already have 9.  20 however would be a bit of a stretch because it would be a minimum 2 hour drive to a county that I do not have 100 birds in and non coastal making 100 birds rather difficult even with a trip each season.  So maybe I will settle for 15 and take a few longer trips to south Texas.  That seems doable.

This morning I headed out to work on my Liberty county list.  I started the day with 87 species for that county and I figured it being 30 degrees outside I could search a bunch of ponds and pick up a few ducks and hopefully find a few sparrows.  Ducks were nowhere to be found but I did manage 4 lesser scaup and 2 hooded mergansers.  I did manage 2 new sparrow species as well along with several other good cold weather birds bringing my grand total for Liberty county......99!
I also got flagged for a high count on Brown Pelicans.  So many are not expected that far inland.
 
I have a couple south Texas counties with 90 birds so if I can get those counties knocked out along with Liberty county that will bring me to 12.  The remaining 3 counties will require much work.

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