14 May 2013
In my last post I said we had switched to mainly birding and there was a reason we had done so. About eight or nine months ago, Ryan Douglas approached me with the idea of doing a Big Day. In birding terms, a Big Day is a 24 hour, calendar day in which you observe as many birds as you can within a predetermined geographical boundary. Ryan thought he would like to do a Big Day in Boone County, Missouri. The more we talked about it, the more fun it sounded. It didn't take us long to decide that we not only wanted to do it, but we wanted to break a record. There are several records that we knew we could potentially get. The first was for the most bird species observed in one day in Boone County, MO. The record stood at 154 and was actually co-held by Ryan. We truly believed that 155 was attainable. The second record that was in the back of our minds was for the most bird species observed in a single Missouri county on a single day. That record stood at 164. We knew if we had a really good day, that we could probably come close to that. The record we knew we had no shot at was for the most birds species seen in Missouri in a single day without the limit of staying in a single county. That record was set on 11 May 1991 and stands at 208 species.
About six months ago, after we truly committed ourselves to doing this, the planning began. We knew to get the most species possible, we would have to scout areas, make a plan, and stick to that plan. So we started scouting. Really, we just started birding a lot and keeping track of the best places to see each species. We (mainly Ryan) divided the species into categories of likelihood of finding. As time got closer, we kept adjusting the ranking based on how the habitat was looking. Being cold this spring has made migration a little slow which also made it hard to judge species. However, the slow migration gave us potential for a few lingering winter species. Just a few days before the count we had Red-breasted Nuthatches, Purple Finches, and Pine Siskins. All of these birds would typically be gone by this time of the year.
Part of our scouting included looking really hard to bird nests. We kept track of these locations as we figured they would be sure fire ways to see the birds if we didn't get them anywhere else. We also started a gear checklist so we wouldn't forget anything and started planning our day in ten minute increments. Ryan made a handy chart similar to the distance chart you find in an atlas, only his showed the time it would take to get between any two places we were considering. Jenna kept going back on forth on whether or not she wanted to participate. I finally convinced her that it was worth the loss of sleep. Most importantly, we needed her eyes and ears. Besides that, she was going to be in on a lot of the scouting trips anyway. We started nailing down bird locations pretty well, then I got a message from Ryan about asking Grant Connette to join our team. I like Grant and it's always good to have another good birder along, so I thought it was a good idea. Turns out, it was a GREAT idea. Grant was a T.A. for the ornithology class and led several field trips every week. This turned out to be an invaluable resource. Everything was coming together nicely. On 07 May, we all met at Ryan's house to eat banana bread (thanks Diana!) and go over final plans. We would make a quick run on Friday to finalize a few more species' locations and to make sure some birds were still in the areas they had been. Our Friday run started about 10:45a.m. and we were done by 4p.m. The manager of Eagle Bluffs Conservation area let us stash our bikes at the office, so we dropped those off on our route. At the end of the day, we considered our final scouting adventure a success. Time for a few hours of sleep.
This is my attempt at recalling the basics of the day. We followed the rules listed by the American Birding Association in the conduct of our Big Day.
Jenna's and my alarm went off at 10:30 on Friday night. We had already gathered most of our gear, so all we had to do was get dressed, load the gear, brush our teeth, and check for any more Boone County updates from eBird or the email listserve. It is against Big Day rules to seek help from outside your group on the day itself, so this was our last chance to see if there was anything new. There wasn't. We all met at Ryan's at 11:30p.m. We loaded the car and snapped a quick picture of ourselves before heading off.
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| Myself, Jenna, Grant, and Ryan |
Our original plan was to sit and listen for birds migrating overhead, but the clear skies kept this from happening because there were no clouds to keep the birds close enough to the ground to hear and Eagle Bluffs CA didn't open until 4:00a.m. So we waited. And waited. And wished we had heavier coats. 4:00a.m finally came and we headed into Eagle Bluffs. This was our guaranteed spot to find Eastern Screech-Owls; they are thick at this place. Or was it. We tried and tried, but nothing. We finally decided we couldn't waste anymore time on the Screech-Owl. That was one we could get that evening if we needed. We headed to the marsh where we quickly picked up Sora and Virginia Rail. While trying to get Least Bittern to answer (they never did) we finally heard the distant whinny of an Eastern Screech-Owl. It was about 5:20a.m. when we started heading out of Eagle Bluffs. We absolutely had to be to our next spot when it opened at 6:00a.m. Just outside of Eagle Bluffs, we stopped to listen. Wild Turkey was gobbling, Ryan and I did some cleanup with the Northern Bobwhite (rules dictate that 95% of all birds must be observed by all members of the group), an Eastern Whip-poor-will was calling loudly, and a Grasshopper Sparrow was calling next to the road.
Our next stop was Grindstone NA. The second Saturday in May is always the North American Migratory Count (NAMC), so we were helping Grant do his part while adding to our daily total. On the way to Grindstone, Ryan finally said something all of us were thinking. He said, "The next two hours will probably make or break our Big Day." We knew it was supposed to get windy in the afternoon, so getting all of our songbirds early was of utmost importance. I don't remember our exact count when we got to Grindstone at 6a.m., but I believe it was in the low 60s. Thirty minutes later, our count was 91. Warblers were everywhere. We were on an amazing pace. Here is the checklist Grant made for the NAMC. http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S14099100.
After our success at Grindstone, we moved on to Rockbridge Memorial State Park. Here is where we had a shot at a couple warblers we were missing as well as cleaning up on the thrushes. Cruising down the road Ryan and I both heard a Pine Siskin in someone's yard. He slammed on the brakes so Jenna and Grant could get it. As he was backing up, a Cooper's hawk flew from a tree. Just after the Siskin called again, a car came over the hill and we had to move on. Talk about dumb luck; that was our only Pine Siskin and Cooper's Hawk all day. Rockbridge seemed a little slow, although we did pick up on a new vireo, a couple warblers, and all but one of our thrushes. We were pretty pleased with way the day was going and amazingly, we were staying on time. When I say on time, I mean we were arriving at each of our destinations within two or three minutes of our planned arrival time.
We next went back to Eagle Bluffs CA. The time was approaching 10:00 a.m. Eagle Bluffs provided us with a few shorebirds, although shorebird diversity was lacking a little. We did see a dozen White-faced Ibis which were a nice addition to our list. We cruised the road around the area where Yellow-headed Blackbirds had been scouted, but didn't find any. We were assuming the wind was keeping them down in the cattails and out of sight. We saw Great Egrets, Trumpeter Swans, and a few others. At 10:50a.m. I asked what the time was. It felt like early afternoon to me, and I didn't believe the clock on the car's dash. I was assured that it was correct. We were on our way out of Eagle Bluffs to drive a road that parallels the Missouri River when the announcement was made, "156." We had beaten the Boone County record and it wasn't even noon yet.
The River Road was kind of a gamble. We had potential for a couple species that would be tough to find anywhere else. Specifically we had seen Swainson's Hawks and Scissor-tailed Flycatcher in the area. We had also found Eurasian Collared-Dove in the town of Hartsburg, a bird that could be tough to find in the steadily increasing winds. On Friday, our trip to the River Road also yielded a lot of Bobolinks along the whole route. Saturday was a different story. The only birds on the wires where a dozen Eastern Kingbirds. We already had those! Slowing down to cross the Katy Trail we got Scarlet Tanager. The Swainson's Hawks were no where to be found. However, just down the road we came upon a flock of about 70 Bobolinks. Finally! Not much farther was a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher sitting on a wire. Around a corner was a small pond (puddle) in the middle of a field that had previous held a couple of shorebirds. Upon closer observation we saw a duck on the water, so we got the scopes out. Although slightly perplexing due to what had to be a muddy face, we finally identified the Red-breasted Merganser. A rather late bird and even more uncommon in a shallow farm puddle. The Eurasian Collared-Doves were no where to be found in Hartsburg. The only thing we got in that town were funny looks due to Ryan's best attempts to imitate the dove's call. Time to move on.
Next stop, Baskett Research Area where the Pine Warbler again called on cue, just as he had on Friday. I needed to take a bathroom break so I stepped behind a tree across the road only to hear the rest of the group jabber something about a Cerulean Warbler. Rats, I missed it! Bird number two of the day that someone had missed due to nature's call. Oh well, we were well within the 95%. We tried hard for a lingering Red-breasted Nuthatch, but had no luck. After Baskett we headed to a couple of the power substations where we had scouted Western Kingbirds. They have been nesting in these areas and for the past week had been seen every time we stopped. Today there was nothing. We tried three times at both of these stations with no luck.
Our next stop involved a little more exercise. We stopped at the office of Eagle Bluffs and got on our bikes. It was a couple mile ride to our next stop at the City of Columbia's waste water treatment cells. Here we got Great-tailed Grackle, our only American Bittern gave great looks as he circled over the cattails before disappearing, and Grant found our only Green Heron of the day. We stopped along the Katy Trail on the way back to try for Northern Waterthrush, but we failed. A Swainson's hawk soared high overhead; bird number three that not all of us got. We rode back to the Headquarters, got rid of our bikes, and back into a car. We were headed back to Eagle Bluffs.
On our way into Eagle Bluffs, Ryan pulled into a little pull off by Perche Creek. Grant immediately spotted a Blue Grosbeak, but we still didn't have a pesky Belted Kingfisher. That was a bird we were supposed to have at Grindstone NA in the morning. As we entered Eagle Bluffs, Jenna and Ryan heard a Cape May Warbler; our fourth and final "dirty bird." We headed straight for the willows in pool 8. This was a great spot because we had the potential for another warbler and we could also see all of pool 10 for shorebirds. Shorebirds were lacking in numbers as were warblers. We did pick up a Northern Waterthrush for warbler species number 31! We also saw a group of Forester's Terns fly past. Four birds flew by that Jenna and I both though were Black Terns, but Grant and Ryan though were shorebirds. None of us got a binocular view of the birds, so they remained unidentified and uncounted. We decided to once again look for the Yellow-headed Blackbirds. We walked around the area where they had been hoping to flush them, but didn't find any. We did however get some Ring-necked Ducks, Lesser Scaup, and a Redhead, all of which were not totally expected. Our original plans were to spend dusk at either Eagle Bluffs CA or ride back to the waste water facility in hopes of some more shorebirds coming in, but this was starting to seem like an idea that wouldn't pay off. So we left.
Ryan had been having Purple Finches and Cedar Waxwings in his yard, so we decided to try there and then maybe go to another city park to try for Belted Kingfisher. I mentioned that there was a Belted Kingfisher at his house during our planning meeting, but he assured me that had happened only a time or two. We sat on his deck for a minute when I heard the Kingfisher. There are a pair of breeding Northern Mockingbirds next door that do excellent imitations, so we were listening intently for another call when the Belted Kingfisher flew right over the yard. No question about it now!. The purple finch soon responded to a call. We were at 180 species!!! We now held the record for the most birds seen in a single day and in a single county in the state of Missouri. We still had some light left and thought 181 sounded much better than 180 (we learned after looking over the sheets, that the Purple Finch actually made number 181), so we went north to another substation that we had not scouted. We finally got our Western Kingbird; number 182! Although we were quickly running out of light, we made the dash to Rocky Fork Lakes CA. As we entered the area, we saw a Caspian Tern flying over the lake. A sprint to some pine trees did not yield the Red-breasted Nuthatch that had been there for the previous week. We went back to the lake and watched the sun set. The Caspian Tern was no where in sight. Here is a picture Jenna snapped with her phone of the sunset.
It was now dark. We were all really tired, dirty, and ready to brush our teeth, so we decided to call it a night. The only other birds we really had a shot at were Least Bittern and Yellow-crowned Night Heron, and we had tried really hard for those during the darkness of morning. We later learned that no one doing the NAMC at Eagle Bluffs CA had either of those species, so we were glad we didn't go back. We had been in the car for over 220 miles with a lot of gear and had observed 183 species in 20.5 hours. That is an average of a species every 6.7 minutes. We had shattered the Boone County and single county records by 29 and 19 species respectively, but most importantly we had a lot of fun getting all of those birds. On the way home a new topic arose. Is it possible to see 200 species in Boone County, MO in a single day?
Here is the list of our birds for the day:
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