The Big Day

 

The 2009 Big Day has come and gone.  The Big Day is an annual effort by our friend Jon, to see how many bird species he can see in one day.  In one sense, it’s like when Judy and I go somewhere.  I drive; she tells me where to go.  In this instance, I drive; he birds (while telling me where to go).

 

After all the years Judy and I have talked about, thought about, and sometimes even studied birds, we get blown away by a really good birder.  There is a difference in aptitude.  Jon sees shapes and movements (undetected by us) in an instant.  He has enough bird pictures and songs in his head that identification rarely takes more than another instant.  Really, he’s not a normal human being.  He’s a Martian.

 

Not only is this a self-inflicted fast-paced birding challenge, but this year we expanded the concept to include sleep deprivation as well.  Judy and I got up normally one morning and had a normal day.  Then Jon and I left at midnight that night to start the challenge.  We used the entire twenty-four hours.  We listened for rails at the Birding Center in Port Aransas.  We drove all the way down to Bentsen Rio Grande State Park south of Mission for some owling in the dark.  We birded through the morning chorus at daybreak and got some South Texas Specialties we needed.  It really helps to have all the birds start yelling, all at the same time, so you can pick out who is there and where they are.

 

After the night-birds and the daybreak forest-birds in Way South Texas, we headed back north for Green Parakeets, to fields where we could find inland wading birds, and other sites for migrants, mudflat birds, ocean shore birds, more migrants, ducks and gulls, to a backyard for siskins, to a highway bridge over a hint of a creek for seaside sparrows and boat tailed grackles.  We finished off daylight a hundred miles north with more forest birds and the barred owl.  Time was no longer of the essence, so we stopped for some fine dining at the Dairy Queen in Refugio.  I had a blizzard for dinner.  Jon had nachos.  Then we finished off the night on the trail of the black rail on some private property (by permission) that Jon had found out about.

 

As a result of our driving, birding, and talking about birding for twenty-four continuous hours, we stayed awake and mostly functional, drove six hundred fifty miles, birded seventeen distinct birding sites, and tallied one hundred ninety-one bird species.  We didn’t do as well on migrants as we wanted, but we did great on everything else, except for the biggest, noisiest, most conspicuous bird in all of South Texas, the Plain Chachalaca.  We birded the Rio Grande Valley and couldn’t get a Plain Chachalaca.  Even without the Plain Chachalaca though, we had a great time.

 

If you’re asking yourself what the appeal is, what the attraction is, to twenty-four continuous hours of birding, I can describe it:

 

“It’s like having fun…. only different!”