Big day

Birders are a compulsive lot. They keep lists. They do a life-list for how many birds they have seen altogether. Some keep “state” lists, “year” lists, “day” lists, and so on. We met a world birder who was on a global quest to see at least one bird from every family of birds on the planet. Family is the next classification up from genus and species. There are a lot of families.

The year list has its own name. It’s called a big year. The standing record for a North American big year is 745 birds, set in 1998. North America is everything north of the Mexico border. If you stand on the banks of the Rio Grande, look across and see a bird standing on the other side, it doesn’t count on your North America list. It has to be on your side of the middle.

Our recent participation in the Coastal Birding Challenge was an effort at a Big Day. We got 89 birds. Last Sunday was our friend Jon’s big day. His record day is 165 birds. He wanted to try to break his record. I got to go along.

It was Jon’s day. Even though I got to see every bird, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as many alone. Jon is the birder that knows where to go and when. He knows all the birds and can make the calls quickly. I went along as logistical and moral support. He birded. I drove.

We birded towns, forests, fields, marshes, grass, bushes, leaves, dirt, and the open sky. Palm trees, cemeteries, state parks, county parks, city parks, beach parks, and jetties. We birded from the car, on foot, and by sound. The first birds we got were all by voice in the dark. The first bird we saw was the silhouette of a monk parakeet flying out of a palm tree before dawn. After it got light, the pace picked up.

Overall, it was a fifteen hour effort. Fourteen hours of birding. Three hundred miles of driving. One hundred seventy birds. Jon had a big day. So did I. It was great fun.