Bird Friendly Coffee Now Available at a Major Retailer

June 14, 2013 – 11:16 am

By Gustave Axelson

Allegro Early Bird Blend coffee is Bird Friendly certifiedYou may also be interested in our main page about Bird Friendly, organic, and shade-grown coffees.

Smithsonian-certified Bird Friendly coffee is the strictest standard for shade-grown, organic coffees, but it can be hard to find in stores. This became somewhat easier in June 2013, when Whole Foods Markets began carrying Bird Friendly–labeled coffee in their 300+ stores across the U.S. and Canada.

The coffee is the Early Bird Blend from Allegro Coffee. Its beans come from Bird-Friendly certified coffee farms in Nicaragua and Mexico that provide forestlike habitat for birds.

As we reported in October, Bird Friendly coffee makes up less than 1 percent of total U.S. coffee sales. In a further twist, only an estimated 10 percent of Bird Friendly certified coffee beans actually carry the Bird Friendly label on the package, because retailers often opt to put more widely recognized (but less stringent) labels on the packages (see our guide to sustainable coffee labels).

But now, Whole Foods is running a test to give Bird Friendly coffee more exposure, and perhaps make the Bird Friendly label more recognizable to consumers. Christy Thorns of Allegro Coffee explained: “We had been buying from [Bird Friendly] certified farms and co-ops for a while, but had never tried to promote the coffee with the Bird Friendly label. Typically these coffees had been sold with… Organic Fair Trade labels or Organic Rainforest Alliance labels, because they are more recognized by consumers. However, I felt we should give the Bird Friendly seal a try and see if consumers connect with it.”

Robert Rice, a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (which created the Bird-Friendly certification criteria), hopes birders will show retailers that there is a strong market for Bird Friendly coffee. Rice encourages people to thank the store managers at Whole Foods for carrying Bird Friendly coffee in their stores (or if they don’t find the Early Bird Blend, to ask managers about it). He also is interested in hearing from people about their experiences looking for Early Bird Blend coffee at Whole Foods.

In addition to Whole Foods, you can find Bird Friendly coffee at the stores in this Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center list. You can also order Bird Friendly coffee online from many roasters, including Birds & Beans.

(Image courtesy Allegro Coffee.)

By Hugh | Posted in conservation, what you can do | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Finally: a “Master Set” of 4,938 Downloadable Bird Sounds

May 30, 2013 – 1:06 pm

Nearly 80 years in the making, the most comprehensive downloadable guide to bird sounds is now available—The Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds: Master Set for North America. Nearly 300 recordists through the decades captured the sounds of wailing loons, warbling warblers, grunting grouse, and everything in between. The 4,938 tracks were selected from nearly 200,000 recordings in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library—the world’s largest archive of  animal sounds.

From Abert’s Towhee to Zone-tailed Hawk, the Master Set presents the most complete vocal repertoires for 735 species of North American birds, available in downloadable MP3 files. A photo of each species is included. Examples of unusual vocalizations include the dawn song of the Acadian Flycatcher, the flight song of the Yellow-breasted Chat, and the display flight of the American Woodcock. Listeners may be surprised to learn that even common backyard birds, such as the Black-capped Chickadee, Carolina Wren, and Tufted Titmouse, make a variety of sounds they may not have known about. The Master Set also includes the voice of the now-extinct Bachman’s Warbler and the bubbling, popping courtship sounds of Gunnsion Sage-Grouse, an imperiled species.

The Master Set is now available at a special introductory rate of $49.99, a savings of $10.00 off the regular price.

For those who just want to get started learning about bird sounds, the Cornell Lab has also compiled The Cornell Guide to Bird Sounds: Essential Set for North America. The Essential Set includes 1,376 high-fidelity tracks, featuring the most commonly heard vocalizations for 727 species that regularly occur in the United States and Canada. The Essential Set is now available for the introductory price of $12.99 ($7.00 off the regular price).

“From 1929 to this very day, the Macaulay Library has a long tradition of collaboration with wildlife sound recordists,” says Macaulay Library audio curator Greg Budney. “We’re celebrating the talent and dedication of all the citizen scientists down through the years whose work makes up the bulk of these collections.”

Audio engineer Matt Young, who completed the work on the two collections, says the Master Set was created as a definitive North American reference guide for birders, researchers, and students. “These are living, breathing productions,” Young said. “We’ll always be looking to update the collections as new and better recordings come into the archive.”

Budney adds, “We hope these sounds motivate more people to work for the protection of birds so that these wonderful voices may still be heard by generations to come. Better yet, we hope these recordings inspire people to get to know the birds that are still alive for us to see and enjoy.”

These new sound collections are available in the Macaulay Library online store, where you can hear several more audio samples.

By Annetta | Posted in Birds, products, sounds | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Slow Down and Enjoy These High-Speed Birds and Beetles in Action [video]

May 29, 2013 – 3:15 pm

By Shailee Shah

Shailee ShahA chameleon’s tongue, a bee’s flight, a cheetah’s chase, a kingfisher’s dive, a manakin’s “singing” wings—many animals go about their lives doing things in the blink of an eye. There is a whole secret world of the fast-moving that remains to be explored and understood with the aid of high-speed videography.

I had my first opportunity to record with a high-speed camera over spring break in southern California. I was one of six Cornell students in a 10-day recording workshop taught by the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library. Though I had seen plenty of slow-motion film before, it was mind-blowing to watch and record animals moving around at normal speed, and then play back the sequence in slow motion.

A normal video or movie plays at 24–30 frames per second (fps), which is enough for our eyes to perceive motion. But animals can move much faster. A hummingbird can beat its wings more than 50 times a second, making it a complete blur to the naked eye.

The high-speed camera we brought, a Sony FS700, can shoot at 240 fps. In a nutshell, this means that it slows down movement by eight times, stretching a second of real time to eight seconds of video. In the clips above, it’s almost magical to see what animals are really doing in the blink of an eye.

For example, driving through the Carrizo Plain—a vast, arid grassland east of San Luis Obispo—looking for pronghorns and Prairie Falcons, we noticed a host of scarab beetles flying about. So we got down on our hands and knees and filmed one taking off from a rock. A quiver of antennae, a sudden unfolding of wings and it was gone, launching itself in the air in a split second. Played back in slow motion, the elegance of the beetle’s flight is revealed as its metallic orange wings fold out, like an entomological Transformer, and it seems to hover its way into the air.

Similarly, some Costa’s Hummingbirds foraging at Joshua Tree National Park prompted us to take high-speed videos of the birds in flight, hovering around bright chuparosa flowers and flying in for a quick sip of nectar. At 240 fps, the camera teases out the circular motion of the wings from the indistinct hum perceived by the naked eye. A kindly employee of the Oasis of Mara visitor center showed us a Costa’s Hummingbird nest right outside an office window. The female kept appearing out of nowhere, shooting in to supply her two young with regurgitated food and then taking off again. Shot at high speed, her graceful landing was the icing on top of a whole morning spent desperately trying to film these darting, three-inch-long organisms that act more like insects than birds.

Even “slower” shorebirds like avocets, whimbrels, and egrets perform predatory maneuvers that defy human speeds. Watching a Snowy Egret foraging on the beach, we were taken aback every time it managed to nab a springtail from the hundreds jumping about all around it. Slowed down with high-speed video, the egret’s split-second process of singling out a morsel, correcting aim, and grabbing it is revealed.

Needless to say, we were all blown away by these beautiful videos. And what makes this technology even cooler is how it can be applied to the scientific study of things like the feeding morphology of hummingbirds and shorebirds.

Our human sensory organs are by no means perfect. There are colors we cannot see, sounds we cannot hear, textures we cannot feel, speeds we cannot process. Technology like high-speed videography can help make these phenomena accessible to our sensory range and uncover the secrets of this hidden world, an opportunity that we were very fortunate to have as students on this expedition.

(Shailee Shah ’14 is a Cornell senior majoring in Biology and English. The expedition was organized by the Cornell Lab’s Macaulay Library and led by Benjamin M. Clock, Martha Fischer, and Larry Arbanas. Student participants included Mary Margaret Ferraro, Nathaniel Young, Andy Johnson, Teresa Pegan, and Luke Seitz. In addition to videography the students learned audio recording techniques and helped gather recordings of key species for the Macaulay Library archive.)

By Annetta | Posted in Birds, field reports, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (18)

Learn About Birds From Anywhere: New Online Webinar and Course Offerings

May 17, 2013 – 10:33 am


New online-learning offerings are the latest additions to the Cornell Lab’s collection of educational materials. The options now range from live, one-hour webinars with an expert ornithologist all the way to an in-depth, college-level correspondence course with a 1,200-page textbook.

If you enjoy watching and learning about birds, you might like the chance to investigate a little deeper with one or more of our courses. From simplest to most in-depth, here’s what we offer:

  • NEW: a series of Be a Better Birder webinars. We currently are offering a four part series on waterfowl identification (May–June 2013), and are working on more topics. The live, one-hour webinars are conducted by an expert ornithologist on our staff and include instruction, polling the audience about mystery photos, and a chance to ask questions.
  • NEW: a self-paced series of Be a Better Birder tutorials aimed at beginning birders who want solid instruction in the basics of bird identification. The tutorials build on the concepts introduced in the Inside Birding and Building Skills sections of All About Birds. They feature interactive components to help you practice your skills, rather than just telling you how. You can go through them as many times as you like for 6 months after you sign up.
  • Investigating Behavior: Courtship and Rivalry in Birds is a five-week online course perfect for people whose  interests lie beyond identification, and who want to know how and why birds communicate and display. It’s been a popular course over the last four years, taken by more than 650 people in 19 countries.
  • Our Home Study Course in Bird Biology is a comprehensive correspondence course in ornithology that has been taken by tens of thousands of people from all over the globe in the 41 years it has been offered.

The Education program at the Cornell Lab is dedicated to providing opportunities for lifelong learning about birds in a variety of ways to a multitude of audiences all over the world —and we’ll continue working on new ones. Already the most common response on our post-webinar surveys is, “More, please. What other ones will you offer?”

 (Images: example screenshots from our online offerings. This post was written by Kevin McGowan, who developed the tutorials and is an instructor for the Home Study Course, Courtship and Rivalry, and webinars.)

By Hugh | Posted in Birds, education | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Ornithologist, conservationist Robert Ridgely receives 2013 Allen Award

May 16, 2013 – 11:27 am

Three Allen Award recipients: Linda Macaulay, 2013 recipient Robert Ridgely, Victor Emanuel

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology bestowed its prestigious Arthur A. Allen Award for 2013 to Dr. Robert Ridgely, at a ceremony May 14 at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library. The award, named for Cornell Lab founder Arthur Allen, was established in 1967 to honor those who have made significant contributions to ornithology by making it accessible to the general public.

“No individual alive today has contributed more to the understanding and widespread public appreciation of South American birds than Bob Ridgely,” said Cornell Lab director John Fitzpatrick. “Through his own pioneering explorations in the Andean wilderness, his meticulously researched books and articles, and his relentless pursuit of conservation milestones in Ecuador and beyond, Bob embodies everything that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology strives to achieve and support. ”

“As founder of the Cornell Lab, Arthur Allen broke important ground by blurring the lines between amateur naturalists and professional scientists,” Fitzpatrick said. “Today we honor Allen’s vision by recognizing other leaders who help build this vital bridge, and nobody does this better than Robert Ridgely.”

Dr. Ridgely is an expert on Neotropical birds and coauthor of The Birds of Panama, The Birds of Ecuador, and The Birds of South America. Ridgely and fellow birder John Moore discovered a new species of antpitta in Ecuador in 1997.  Subsequently named the Jocotoco Antpitta, it has gangly blue legs, a white cheek patch, and vocalizations that range from a soft hooting to a sharp bark. The endangered bird was given the scientific name Grallaria ridgelyi to honor Dr. Ridgely.

Jocotoco Antpitta by Patty McGann via Wikipedia

Listen to the bird’s call and song, recorded by Dr. Ridgely in 1997. The recording is archived in the Lab’s Macaulay Library collection.

Ridgely is the cofounder and president of Fundación de Conservación Jocotoco, which runs 10 nature reserves in Ecuador. He has worked tirelessly to promote bird conservation during his tenure at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Bird Conservancy, continuing to the present in his role as Honorary President of the World Land Trust-US.

“Dr. Robert Ridgely is a trailblazer in conservation as well as one the world’s foremost field ornithologists and tropical researchers,” says Dr. Paul Salaman, Chief Executive Officer of World Land Trust-US. “His no-nonsense approach to conservation has resulted in the purchase of private lands for the protection of birds and their environment, producing real world results.”

Ridgely has been awarded the Eisenmann Medal by the Linnaean Society of New York (2001); the Chandler Robbins Award from the American Birding Association (2006); and the Ralph W. Schreiber Conservation Award by the American Ornithologists’ Union (2011).

Past Winners of the Arthur A. Allen Award include Roger Tory Peterson, Alexander Wetmore, Sir Peter Scott, Alexander Skutch, Tom Cade, Victor Emanuel, and Linda Macaulay.

(Image: 2013 Allen Award recipient Robert Ridgely, center, with two past recipients, Linda Macaulay and Victor Emanuel. Photo courtesy John Fitzpatrick.)

By Hugh | Posted in conservation, News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Student World Series Team Wins Cape May County With 166 Species

May 15, 2013 – 11:29 am

Team Redhead wins the 2013 Cape May County Division in the World Series of Birding

By Pat Leonard

Imagine standing in a marsh at night with the rain pouring down and wind blowing through the tall grass, masking all other sounds. Imagine standing there for 20 minutes and not hearing a single bird. That’s the way Team Redhead’s World Series of Birding began on May 11 at midnight. Despite the soggy start, these five intrepid Cornell students followed their plan in an efficient, clockwork-like manner and tallied 166 species to capture the Cape May County division championship. At the same time they raised money earmarked for undergraduate research and conservation projects (see video examples).

After that first silent 20 minutes, a Canada Goose broke the ice and the birding got a lot better in the Tuckahoe Wildlife Management Area in the north end of the county. The Redheads then checked off Virginia, Clapper, and King rails, plus Great Horned Owl, Chuck-will’s-widow, and Whip-poor-will.

“Benjamin Van Doren is amazing with night-flight calls,” says team co-captain Ben Barkley “That’s how we got Least Bittern flying overhead and Rose-breasted Grosbeak–our only chance to get those species all day.”

A seawatch at dawn at Cape May Point brought better weather as well as Royal Tern, Red-breasted Merganser, and Black Skimmer. While Andy Johnson, Jack Hruska, and Van Doren scoped the ocean with Teresa Pegan doing the same with binoculars, Barkley watched for migrants and pulled in Bank Swallow and Green Heron.

At Higbee Beach and Hidden Valley, the team scored 20 species of warbler along with a Blue-headed Vireo. Wintering birds that typically would have moved on to their breeding grounds by now helped swell the species total, including Ruddy Duck, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and Pine Siskin.

The breeding birds up north all showed up on cue as midday stops produced key species including Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Yellow-throated Vireo, Summer Tanager, Eastern Meadowlark, and Horned Lark. A quick sweep of expected shorebirds along the Atlantic brought the team to Cape Island where they finished the daylight hours with Lesser Black-backed Gull, Gull-billed Tern, Eurasian Collared-Dove, and a very unexpected Brown Pelican.

Every Big Day team has a nemesis bird, and for Team Redhead this year, that was the Northern Flicker.

Between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. the Redheads also did well. Johnson and Barkley did a Barred Owl duet that sounded sufficiently enticing to have the real thing respond. During an impromptu stop for screech-owl, Barkley says, “Andy did a perfect whinny and trill and the bird responded. He just nailed it, it was awesome!” That was the last bird tallied for the day, number 166.

At the finish line, the Redheads checked over their list, checked it again, and handed it in. They had to wait for one more county-wide team to turn in its list before finding out they’d won—too tired to whoop and holler but well satisfied with the end result!

“You put so much work in beforehand, studying the songs, holding team meetings, and then you work like crazy during scouting, and you work so hard during the day and to find out you won is just incredible,” Barkley says. “We made sure we ran between every stop—running to the car, running back to the car, we were all out and we worked incredibly well together.”

Thanks to all who donated in support of Team Redhead—and produced such an inspiring performance!

(Image: Team Redhead in black—Ben Barkley, Benjamin Van Doren, Andy Johnson, Teresa Pegan, and Jack Hruska—accepting their award from Dale Rosselet [left] and Pete Dunne [right].)

By Hugh | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Scouting Report: Students of Team Redhead Prepare for World Series of Birding

May 10, 2013 – 9:29 am


Team Redhead is doing its homework. These five Cornell students, all top-notch birders, are into their second full day of scouting ahead of this Saturday’s 30th annual World Series of Birding in New Jersey. As always, the goal is to identify as many bird species by sight or sound as possible in a slightly manic 24-hour period.

This year’s team roster includes Big Day veterans and co-captains Andy Johnson and Ben Barkley along with returning Redhead Jack Hruska. The newcomers are Benjamin Van Doren and Teresa Pegan.

They have Cape May County’s 620 square miles to cover, scoping forest, marsh, protected bays, and open ocean for species they can count on when the competition begins at the crack of midnight on May 11. They want to win their division for bragging rights, of course, but most importantly to raise vital funds for undergraduate student research and conservation projects. You can spur on the team and support their cause.

The Redheads first full day of scouting in Cape May was on Wednesday—a day that dawned foggy, cold, and drizzly. Barkley, Van Doren, and Pegan spent their time scouting the northern half of the county, in Belleplain State Forest. They were on the lookout for local breeding bird species that are hard to find farther south in the county, such as Kentucky Warblers and Summer Tanagers. The Big Day route traditionally begins up here, in a dark, damp marsh, listening for the hoots of owls and the calls of other nocturnal necessities such as Gray-cheeked, Swainson’s, and Wood thrushes that may be migrating overhead.

Johnson, Hruska, and scouting assistant Jacob Drucker did a seawatch Wednesday morning and scoured areas of Cape Island where tired migrants tend to stop for a rest. Johnson reports the team is finding most of what they’re looking for, though there have been no major “fallouts” like the one last month on the Texas coast that helped Team Sapsucker set a new Big Day record.

Ducks are always a challenge in May because you never know if any will be lingering on their migration—most have already moved north. So far, scouting has turned up Green-winged Teal, Gadwall, Black Duck, and Long-tailed Ducks.

There were several highlights on Wednesday: a Pine Siskin that should have packed its bags and headed north weeks ago, three jaegers, and… the sun. After a drippy start, the day turned warmer, with clear skies that should hold for today’s scouting.

Weather is always the wild card for Big Day and can make or break a team’s tally sheet. The Redheads have some idea of what to expect though, thanks to weekly, regional predictions of bird migration from our BirdCast project. Cornell Lab researcher and BirdCast project leader Andrew Farnsworth has taken a look at what the Redheads might encounter this weekend, and it’s a mixed bag. Light rain and an occasional thunderstorm means migrants already in Cape May will probably stay put, he said. That’s the good news. The bad news is that if there’s a lot of rain, there won’t be many new species of migrants arriving, despite favorable winds from the south to help them along. The wind may pose some difficulties during the day as well, keeping birds hidden and making it hard for the Redheads to hear and see any birds that are moving. The Redheads will get one more BirdCast update just ahead of the Big Day.

Armed with the latest migration and weather information, plus their scouting efforts, The Redheads will work out the fine details of their tightly timed route, deciding whether to cover singing forest birds in the north at dawn, for example, or focus on migrants at the southern tip of the Cape May peninsula first.

Cape May Map

Cape May County includes many bird-friendly habitats as it juts into the ocean with protected bay on one shore and the open Atlantic on the other.

Overall, Andy Johnson says the team feels optimistic about their chances on the Big Day, despite a fair amount of sleep deprivation and the fact that three of the team members have to take finals during the scouting period. Unlike the rest of the World Series teams, they’ll have to factor study time into their scouting equation! But there will be a good supply of New Jersey staples, such as Tastykakes, available from the famous WaWa gas stations that dot the landscape. With a little luck, well-honed talent, and lots of support from donors, Team Redhead will cross the finish line at the Cape May fire station Saturday night with a tally sheet that can’t be beat. Go Redheads!

Keep track of Team Redhead during the World Series on their Facebook page.

(This post was written by Pat Leonard.)

By Annetta | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

New Crossley ID Quiz Challenges You to ID Raptors From Above

May 8, 2013 – 3:20 pm

Plate from The Crossley Guide, Topsides

Click image for a larger version. (Right-click to open in a new window if you’d like to have the photo visible while you read the answers below.)

The new Crossley ID Guide: Raptors came out in April. Crossley’s innovative technique of cramming lots of photos onto a page seems to work especially well with such large birds and open spaces. They force the reader to assimilate details of shape and size while limiting the amount to which we can obsess over fine feather details (just like we have to do in the field).

This new book turns 15 “mystery” plates into a hands-on ID workshop interspersed throughout the pages dedicated to individual species.  It’s a book that invites you to keep turning pages, luring your subconscious into calling out names almost as soon as your eye passes over them.

The photo above is the third of our three examples of plates from the book (the other two are mystery hawks on the prairie, and a Sharp-shinned Hawk workout). This one takes a look from an unusual perspective, looking down at these normally high-flying birds. Can you tell how many species are here? Which is which? Take your best guesses, and then scroll down for answers, tips, and commentary provided by our own raptor expert, Brian Sullivan, an eBird project leader and a coauthor of the Crossley guide.

Scroll down when you’re ready to read Brian’s answers:

Read More »

By Annetta | Posted in Birds, identification, products, quiz | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

Found a Funky Nest? Enter It in Our New Challenge

May 1, 2013 – 3:07 pm


Whether you find a robin’s nest on a statue or a hummingbird’s nest on wind chimes, your picture of a bird nest in a funky place can win big in our Funky Nests in Funky Places contest. With nesting season underway, this contest challenges everyone to get outside and watch nature in even the most unexpected places.

“Just start looking,” says Karen Purcell, who created the contest several years ago as part of the Cornell Lab’s Celebrate Urban Birds citizen-science project. “Past experience has shown us you can find bird nests in the most surprising places. We’ve seen them in helmets, old boots, stoplights, store signs, car tires, clotheslines, mailboxes, potted plants, and even a stuffed moose head!”

The Funky Nests contest lasts until June 15. Entries may be photos, videos, artwork, poems, or stories. You don’t have to be a bird expert or an expert photographer. People of all ages are welcome to participate as individuals or with a class, community center, or afterschool program. Prizes include binoculars, bird feeders, cameras, an iPad, and more.

Entry deadline is June 15.

Find more information about how to find nests, approach nests without disturbing the birds, and enter the contest at www.FunkyNests.org

Celebrate Urban Birds is a free, year-round project that focuses on the arts, creating green spaces for birds, and learning how birds use urban spaces.

A Few Funky Facts About Nests:

  • Most common backyard birds lay two to eight eggs. Hatching usually begins about two weeks after the last egg is laid and it takes another two weeks before the young are ready to leave the nest.
  • Even if a nest has been built in a somewhat inconvenient place (for you), be patient! In a few weeks the birds will be gone. Meanwhile, you get a front-row seat to a wonder of nature.
  • Baby birds have brightly colored beaks that help parents hit the bull’s-eye with food!
  • For their first three days of life, nestling pigeons and doves depend solely on “pigeon milk,” a liquid loaded with protein and fat that is produced by both the mother and father!

What should I do if I find a baby bird?
This is one of the most common springtime questions we receive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Get the answer here.

By Annetta | Posted in Birds, citizen science | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

294 Species and One Shattered Record on “Almost Perfect” Big Day

April 27, 2013 – 10:52 am


As midnight struck on Thursday, April 25, 2013, the six members of Team Sapsucker made North American history with 294 species recorded in a single day—a new record. Buoyed by good weather, excellent scouting help, and one of the largest migration fallouts in recent memory, they raced from the desert washes of south-central Texas to the live oaks of the coast to amass a total larger than almost anyone had imagined possible.

In 2011, Team Sapsucker—Chris Wood, Jessie Barry, Andrew Farnsworth, Marshall Iliff, Tim Lenz, and Brian Sullivan—had set a new record with 264 species. That was three more than the previous high mark. In 2012 they returned to Texas and managed to repeat their result. It seemed as if Texas’s potential might be reaching a plateau, which is why it was on no one’s radar (except for the Sapsuckers themselves) that this year’s total would be a full 30 species higher.

“We’ve always known, or at least had some faith, that 300 is possible,” Iliff said. “But it requires not only perfect planning and perfect execution, which is hard enough, but it also requires perfect weather. Somehow this year all those things happened.”

Early on, the Sapsuckers knew this year could be special. A weather forecast was calling for an unusually strong cold front to make it through Texas and out into the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, conditions in the Yucatan Peninsula were ideal for migrants to begin their long flight north. “When migrants meet these fronts it’s a serious challenge for them,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration expert and project leader for BirdCast. “They hit rain and strong winds, they look for the closest coastal habitat they can find, and they fall out.” After two straight years of strong south winds and  poor migrant turnout, it looked like Thursday could bring calm conditions and migrants galore.

On Wednesday, a report from High Island by team scout Tom Johnson whetted their appetite. Later, he described the scene:

On Wednesday morning as I headed west on the Bolivar Peninsula, I started to notice large waves of Barn Swallows and Chimney Swifts arriving from offshore. I started to see Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Scarlet Tanagers, and Yellow-billed Cuckoos flying low over the beach and landing in marginal shrub habitat, so I hightailed it back to High Island, the only substantial strip of coastal forest for dozens of miles around. The woods had turned into a rush of color. Summer and Scarlet Tanagers were attempting to make landfall after a tough water crossing into north winds. Tennessee Warblers, 330 of them, streamed across 5th Avenue and toward Smith Oaks, a Houston Audubon preserve. Orioles, grosbeaks, and buntings were everywhere. Hundreds of warblers were zipping around the treetops, while others poked around on grassy areas and bare trails, trying to refuel after their marathon flight.

The migrants were good news, but they also meant the team had to pack all their scouting into fewer days. Normally they have a full week to ferret out every last rarity and make endless recalculations to their carefully timed itinerary. In the end, they were still making route adjustments up until the night before. At 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday they decided to allot 30 minutes to a great duck and shorebird spot near San Antonio called Mitchell Lake, but this meant staying up until 10:00 figuring out where to win back the time elsewhere in the route. Then to bed, maybe—they were getting up at 10:30.

A lot of strategy goes into a Big Day. To best coordinate the route, they divide the day into thirds and a two-person team takes responsibility for leading each third. Marshall Iliff and Tim Lenz handled the morning in San Antonio and the Hill Country; Andrew Farnsworth and Brian Sullivan planned out the central portion all the way to the piney woods east of Houston; and Jessie Barry and Chris Wood orchestrated the final push from 4:30 onward into the migration hotspots and shorebird flats of High Island and Bolivar Peninsula.

The team got into position before midnight and began their day with a rare Ross’s Goose that had been hanging out at a suburban park near San Antonio. From there the team hopscotched to Uvalde, pausing for opportune species—a robin and a Blue Jay whose nests were lit by streetlights; pauraques, poorwills, Chuck-will’s-widows; two nighthawks and five owls. By the time dawn broke they were on a quiet road in the desert listening for Scaled Quail, then racing to Chalk Bluffs for a dawn chorus worth 79 species.

Though it wasn’t 8 a.m. yet, the day began to pick up its pace. Racing up a hillside after a Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Andrew Farnsworth watched Brian Sullivan tumble over some barbed wire; on the way back down Farnsworth snagged the exact same strand. The team had to use their full supply of safety pins to repair his pants leg. Iliff briefly raised blood pressures by driving into the Uvalde dump after a Chihuahuan Raven—the same choice that last year led to a flat tire and an hour’s delay. This year: no flat tire, but no raven.

The team’s last-minute decision to add Mitchell Lake paid off with hundreds of ducks and shorebirds, along with a half-dozen soaring raptors. Another detour  that Farnsworth and Sullivan had fretted over also paid off in some wet fields near the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge. In the end, it was fast and productive: brake pedal, exit ramp, wet field, Le Conte’s Sparrow, Upland Sandpiper, on ramp, accelerator.

Now the team had to make it through Houston in midafternoon traffic. On the far side of the city, some of the last fingers of eastern piney woods creep down into Texas, and with it come Pileated Woodpeckers, Prothonotary Warblers, Brown-headed Nuthatches, and Red-headed Woodpeckers. A Swainson’s Warbler, a difficult bird to find at the best of times, sang on cue. A Bald Eagle soared above a reservoir. “And the whole time Brian and I were thinking ‘Oh geez, we’re not going to find any of these woodpeckers we scouted… we’re not going to have enough time,’” Farnsworth said. “We weren’t thinking about numbers, we were thinking about finding birds.”

“One of the hardest things about a Big Day is you have to stay on your pace,” Sullivan added. “When you miss a bird, you can’t linger on it. You just have to say ‘Oh well, we missed it. We’ve got to go,’ even if it’s just 30 seconds or a minute.  Chris and Jessie’s portion of the route starts at 4:30, and if you’ve added minutes onto your day and you’re starting there at 5:15, you’re going to miss 30 birds later.”

When they hit High Island the migration fallout that had begun on Wednesday was still going on. All six of the Sapsuckers are serious, no-nonsense birders who know how to focus. But they’re also people who have loved looking at birds for as long as they can remember. They were having trouble concentrating.

“One of our biggest problems was being distracted by too many adult male Scarlet Tanagers and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks,” Iliff said. “We missed at least three or four species that way, probably more.”

“It was like being in a confetti of all different colors,” Farnsworth said. “It was beyond our abilities to comprehend and stay focused. These red and black Scarlet Tanagers were everywhere in your field of view, such an incredibly intense color, and we’d see 100 of them in a small area, everywhere you look, hopping on the ground.”

As good as the birding was, Barry kept pushing them forward. At one point, Philadelphia Vireos were so close at hand that Iliff photographed one using his iPhone. But despite the nagging sense that among those flitting masses there must be a new species or two—maybe a Bay-breasted or a Golden-winged Warbler—they needed to get to Bolivar with enough daylight to pick up the dozens of species that awaited them there: thousands of avocets, plovers, stilts, dowitchers, knots, yellowlegs, sandpipers, skimmers, gulls, and terns.

When the sun went down Iliff, in the passenger seat, started entering birds into his laptop. A big number at the top of his spreadsheet flashed the total, but he refused to look at it until he was done. All he could hear were Barry and Lenz, sitting behind him and gasping at the numbers; and Farnsworth and Sullivan in the back of the van, asking what was going on. They were at 292. They spent the rest of their time slapping mosquitoes at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, getting King Rail around 10 p.m. and then Virginia Rail at 11:41. As the clock struck midnight, they were still listening for a Black Rail’s kee-kee-kerr. It didn’t come.

A total of 294 immediately raises the question of whether 300 really is possible. For Wood, it’s hard to say. “It’s in the back of our minds as we do this,” he said. “We’re at this point in time where technology will continue to advance, and our knowledge about birds and their exact requirements will continue to increase. But the other question is will there still be areas for birds? The area where we went to see Seaside Sparrow and Nelson’s Sparrow—along that road out into this great estuary—it’s all slated to have homes built on it. And there’s questions like how long will these birds be able to continue moving in these types of numbers? It speaks to so much that the Lab does, and the power of partnerships with local organizations.”

He was talking about help the team had received from dozens of people: expert scouters, crack local birders, birding organizations, kind permission from landowners, and team sponsorship by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics. Scouters included Andy Guthrie, Matt Hafner, Cornell Lab conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg, and Cornell grad Tom Johnson. The team also thanks Michele Crawford, Grant Webber at the Uvalde Fish Hatchery, Neal’s Lodge, Susan Albert and the staff at the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, National Audubon Society, Brad Wier at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, Noreen Baker, Jimmy Laurent at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Harvey Laas, John Berner, Elizabeth Eddins, George and Clarence at Beaumont Waste Treatment, and Patti Ryan, whose delicious cookies powered the team through the day.

(Images taken by Tom Johnson at High Island, Texas, over the last few days. You can still donate in support of Team Sapsucker’s record and to aid our conservation work. You can view the full species list in the team’s eBird checklist.)

By Hugh | Posted in Big Day, Birds | Tagged , , , , | Comments (7)