It's almost time

 

For the Big Day.

 

Every year I go on a Big Day with Jon McIntrye, to see how many species of birds we can identify in a single day.  This year is going to be different though.  We’re going to do a 24 hour Big Day, but not from midnight to midnight; more like a Big 24 Hours.

 

Every previous Big Day, we start at midnight and identify what we can in the dark.  Then there is a lull before dawn.  About an hour before dawn it picks up again and it is a birding frenzy until dark.  Then we’re stuck.  We’ve still got hours to go but we’ve already gotten all the birds we can in the dark in the habitat we’re in.  We’ve got time to drive somewhere else; to different habitat, but it will still be dark when our Big Day expires at midnight.  Not the most efficient use of time.

 

So this year we decided to be different.  We’re going to drive to Victoria, a good birding spot to the north, and wait until after dawn before we start birding; maybe 8:30am.  We’ll bird all day working our way south through the Corpus Christi area.  Then when it gets dark, we’ll drive 150 miles south to the Falcon Lake area, so when it gets light again we’ll be in completely different habitat with different birds to see and hear.  We’ll finish at exactly the same time we started the day before; 8:30am.

 

Jon has been scouting the north section.  I’ve scouted the south a little.  We’ll scout a little more tomorrow morning.  The Big Day is set for Wednesday.

 

I’ll report back.