We Suck!

 

…but before that we were awesome.

 

That Big Day plan Jon put together was a masterpiece.  He timed every distance and stop perfectly.  We tried a different approach this year and started way up northeast to get birds we don’t usually see on this annual effort.  We also decided not to count as we went along.  We’ll just do the best we can and see how it comes out in the end.

 

It was the right day to do it.  The conditions were perfect.  Virgina Rail at the Birding Center in Port Aransas at midnight.  Common Gallinule, Sora, then  a drive up the coast for the King Rail and Black Rail at Magic Ridge outside Indianola.  We did great on rails.  We got everything but the Clapper Rail.  From there we went inland to Victoria for Pileated, Red-bellied, and Downy Woodpecker.  We got Blue Jay, Barred Owl, Great Horned Owl, Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, and American Crow.  We had 35 species by dawn, and the policeman who busted us in Riverside Park at 5 o’clock in the morning didn’t ticket us.  He didn’t even make us leave and wait until the park opened to visitors at 6am.  He volunteered that he had never heard our excuse for being in the park in the middle of the night before, and that it didn’t seem like we were out to cause any trouble.  After dawn, we headed back to the coast and a newly flooded rice field outside Indianola.  Shorebirds galore.  We got everything except Western Sandpiper.  We got all three grackles at Tivoli: Common, Boat-tailed, and Great-tailed.  Across the ferry and back to Port Aransas before noon.  Didn’t get much at Jetty Beach because there were so many people on it for the holiday weekend.  Most of the birds had gone somewhere else.  Got a few terns.  Scored big mid-day on migrants at Paradise Pond and the Birding Center.  We added 25 more birds to our list in less than an hour.  We had to be way ahead of last year.  And that pretty much covers the part where we were awesome.

 

Next, we went to Packery Channel for Eared Grebe.  Oops.  Too many people.  There were fishermen standing in the shallow water next to their kayaks out in the bay, casting, where the grebes should have been.  The wind had come up by the time we got to Hans Suter so we didn’t see much there.  We looped around to the peninsula past Texas A&M for small plovers and got totally shut-out.  The road to the military base past the school was blocked, presumably for the three-day weekend.  We couldn’t get to where the plovers were.  Things were slowing down.

 

We heard it was good at Blucher and the Nature Conservancy house across the street in the morning, but by the time we got there it was slow.  A few birds at Rose Hill and Tule Lake.  It’s just a quiet afternoon.  We kept moving.  Got a few birds at Pollywog, Hazel Bazemore and Sandia, but new birds to add to the list are coming in ones and twos now.  No big bunches.  We’re running out of time.  We got the Monk Parakeet at Orange Grove and went out to Jim Wells County to finish off the daylight.  Normally we start the day out there and get maybe 35 birds during the morning chorus.  This afternoon, not so much.  Got the Audubon’s Oriole, but couldn’t fill in many more blanks.

 

We made our count to see how we were doing.  We have previous Big Day records of 205 and 207.  All that planning.  All that execution.  We only came up with 189 birds.  There are only 3 birds remaining that we could get in the dark on our way back.  We called it off.  It’s official.  We suck.  21+ hours.  500 miles.  8 counties.  189 birds.

 

No matter.  It was good to try a different approach.  We saw different birds this time and what the heck, we can’t set a record every time.  And when we finished, we were still 80 miles from home, so we had the opportunity on the drive back to analyze, evaluate, and strategize about how we will approach the Big Day next year.

 

Only 364 days to go.