A midnight start. We patrol the marshes and get a few birds that we can’t get during the day; primarily owls and rails. It’s almost leisurely birding and we got our usual amount, about 15 species, including clapper rail and king rail. The big rush of birds doesn’t start until about an hour before dawn when the forest scrub birds start waking up and stretching their vocal chords. From there on, the rest of the day, it’s birding at full-speed. In the hour before dawn, we picked up another 30 birds, including common pauraque and common poorwill. By an hour after daylight, we were up to 81 birds, including Audubon’s oriole, yellow-billed cuckoo, and a bald eagle. It was fast and furious after that when we got into the migrants.
The success of our Big Day effort always comes down to how we do at the coast; whether we get a good migrant count or not. This time we got the best-ever migrant day (for a Big Day). As we walked around Blucher and Rose Hill, we were pushing a bow-wake of birds. This was not a fallout where the birds are knocked down exhausted by inclement weather. This was just a really good day in a normal migration with a thousand active birds refueling before continuing their trek north. Wood thrush Swainson’s thrush, black and white warbler, blue-headed vireo, prothonotary warbler, chestnut-sided warbler, hooded warbler, waterthrushes everywhere, worm-eating warbler, kentucky warbler. Too many ovenbirds to count; maybe a hundred. Chuck-will’s widow, cerulean warbler, blue-winged warbler. A wonderful rush of birds. Now we’re at 192 species and we have to keep moving.
On to the Botanical Gardens. Eared grebe, marsh wren, dickcissel. American avocet, long-billed curlew, and Hudsonian godwit! Phalarope, more sandpipers and gull-billed tern. 205. Moving on. Whimbrel and red-breasted merganser. 207. Black skimmer and osprey. 209. On to Packery Channel. Marbled godwit and a bird that has absolutely no business being there, Altamira oriole. 211.
On the drive down Highway 361 on Mustang Island, Aplomado Falcon. Two of them. Philadelphia Vireo, eastern kingbird and least flycatcher at The Willows. 215. Belted Kingfisher. Savannah sparrow. Herring gull and black tern at Jetty Beach. 219. We passed last year’s record. Another warbler, another swallow, and solitary sandpiper at Paradise Pond. 222. Now it’s 7:15 but we’re still finding birds. Sunset isn’t until 8pm. There aren’t many birds left to get. Magnolia warbler at the Birding Center. A late green-winged teal, a wilson’s snipe, and the last swallow to get, the bank swallow. 226 species and dark. There aren’t any more marsh birds we need in the dark. We’re done.
We missed a few birds; there is no way to get them all. We didn’t get a crow or a Mississippi kite in Victoria. We never got a Virginia Rail. But this day was so good, we did so well on so many birds, I can’t imagine ever doing better.
Our route looked like this:
Our stats look like this:
Commute in the bus the day before
and after to get to
the start and end point: 350 miles
Time slept the night before: 2 hours
Meet up at Midnight
Driving for the Big Day: 590 miles
Number of stops for food and fuel: 1, in the middle of the night
Birding sites visited: 21
Walking to get to birds: 5 miles
Time spent birding: 20 consecutive hours
Number of species recorded: 226 species, a new Big Day record for us!
Year-birds for me: Jon predicted 50. I got 54.
Time slept the night after: 12 consecutive hours.
A very excellent adventure!
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