This probably means *nothing at all*. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system.
First, let's toss the lack of Belted Kingfisher. There's a correlation with river levels: higher water levels than seen this year bring them in to some bottomland where they (also long-legged waders, which are also absent this year) are easily detected. That threshold hasn't been reached. The same thing might explain a complete lack of expected Great Horned and Western Screech Owls: water levels may have been high too high to support the record populations seen over the past couple of years, due to unfavorable conditions for prey. In short, the river levels seem likely to have been almost perfectly wrong.
How might those river levels effect WCSP and STJA? No idea. The data only run to 7 years, and support no conclusion.I suspect an increasing trend in passage of migrating STJA, but can't prove it. The uptick in counts is only 3 years old. In the greater scheme of things, that cannot be distinguished from noise in the data.
Might increased WCSP counts provide some evidence that something has actually changed? Sadly, no. My recording has changed, in a couple of respects.
1- Serious lack of time, for professional reasons
2- Variance in sunflower feeder habits
I think we can all understand #1. #2 is about racoons, of all things;
I used to keep a sunflower feeder hanging, and just top it off in the morning, or whenever it seemed low (working from home). A few months ago, one or more raccoons found it, and as there was no good means of safeguarding it, it was brought in at night. And (crucially) re-hung whenever I got around to it in the morning.
Whenever I got around to it tended to be at a later time than "breakfast is always served". It's likely that I saw fewer WCSP before because they could visit any time, and more later when they had to adapt to a more limited opportunity, hence concentrating their numbers.
I'm probably going to stop feeding birds now. Well, perhaps hang a hummingbird feeder (FOY *female* Rufous Hummingbird today). It would be interesting to see how the data might skew, and it's safest to do it now, while the hardships of winter are largely over, but before breeding territories are established.
I expect the yearly species count (119, two years running) to crash, but that number won't matter either--just more short-term statistical noise. Food for thought, at best. At worst, it's an entirely fallacious racoon-induced population crash.
