Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!sunybcs!dmark
From: dmark@acsu.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Most Common NA bird
Message-ID: <11668@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 12 Oct 89 01:28:31 GMT
References: <1989Oct10.134119.608@utzoo.uucp> <3941@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Sender: nobody@acsu.buffalo.edu
Reply-To: dmark@autarch.acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark)
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In article <1989Oct10.134119.608@utzoo.uucp> rising@utzoo.uucp (Jim Rising) writes:
>I'd vote for the starling.  As I understand it, it was difficult
>to introduce the House Sparrow into N.A.  TOok several trys.  But
>the starling took off after the first introduction.

  Actually, there were several Sturnus vulgaris introductions in North
  America, including Boston and Portland (Ore), long before the NY City
  introduction in 1890.  The Oregon birds established a population that
  lasted for a couple of decades before dying out.  Fisher and Peterson's
  "The World of Birds" states that the European Starling and House Sparrow
  are probably the world's most common wild birds.  But, they claim that
  there are more domestic chickens (see below).

In article <3941@helios.ee.lbl.gov> david@msri.org (David Mostardi) writes:
>When I was a zoology student at UC Berkeley, the ornithologists
>there said that the red-winged blackbird was the most common
>North American bird.
>
>PS. What about the rock dove?
>

  Other common and numerous NA birds that would be "contenders" are
  American Robin, Barn Swallow, and Savannah Sparrow.  

  Largest Christmas Bird Count numbers (per 15 mile diameter circle) are
  icterids and starlings.  The 1984 Evangeline Co, Louisiana, CBC had:

  Red-winged Blackbird:         39,800,000
  Brown-headed Cowbird:         19,600,000
  Common Grackle:                2,095,700
  European Starling:             1,625,125
  All other species:                22,145
  
  Total:                        63,142,970

  Passenger Pigeons numbered about 5,000,000,000 in a typical autumn
  migration.  A limitless resource, eh?  Hmmm....


  World's most numerous bird species is, according to the Guinness Book of
  World Records, the Red-billed Quelea (Quelea quelea) of Africa:

  10,000,000,000.

  This is way more than the Fisher & Peterson chicken estimate of 
  3 billion!

  Wilson's Storm-Petrel is another very very numerous bird.


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David Mark                                                 dmark@cs,buffalo.edu
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