Even I sometimes need a wake-up call about how many birds have significant breeding populations in the Boreal.

Take, for example, Red-tailed Hawk. If you read my last post you will remember that I did not include Red-tailed Hawk in my tally of Boreal birds for my cross-country travel game.

I was mistaken.

In referring to our handy-dandy online Boreal bird guide, I now see that an estimated 16% of our Red-tailed Hawks breed in the Boreal. ALot of those red-tails you see at hawk watches in October probably are coming down from the Boreal. Some of those crazy birds sitting on the ground at the Cincinnati airport could have been from the Boreal.

That makes my game list at 6.

And makes me realize yet again what a huge number of our winter birds are coming from the Boreal.

The Boreal region is one of the largest "exporters" of migratory birds to the rest of the Western Hemisphere . About a million are estimated to winter in the U.S. and another two million across the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, and South America.