The concept of a Big Day is bold to begin with—a midnight-to-midnight sleepless birding blitz to see or hear as many species as humanly possible. A feat only for extreme birders. The Sapsuckers, the Cornell Lab’s master birding team, took on that bold challenge and then doubled-down for Big Day 2012, drawing up a never-before-tried-route that stretched the limits of how much area a birder can cover in 24 hours. The new route proved fruitful, and the possibility of a new North American single day birding record was within reach. But a tire-puncturing nail in a city dump, a traffic jam, and a late-day shift in the winds conspired to confound the Sapsuckers, and by the time the clock struck midnight, the team had to grind out a few birds in the dark just to tie the record of 264 species.

The setting was Texas, the nation’s birdiest spot come April, a melting pot of eastern and western birds mixed with Mexican species that range just north of the border, and a constant influx of migrants on spring journeys back from tropical wintering grounds. Prior Big Day attempts have followed a Texas Triangle of San Antonio to the Hill Country, then on the Gulf Coast at Corpus Christi.  The Sapsuckers—consisting of Cornell Lab staffers Chris Wood, Marshall Iliff, Andrew Farnsworth, Jessie Barry, and Tim Lenz—used that exact route to set the Big Day record in 2011. But this year, the team swapped out Corpus Christi for the migrant and seabird rich grounds of Galveston, Bolivar Flats, and High Island. The team reasoned that the longer drive time, more than 500 miles in all, would be worth the bounty of birds from adding a sliver of the Piney Woods and bigger numbers of shorebirds farther north on the Gulf.

It seemed like a sure bet during scout week, as the team tallied more than 300 species over the seven days leading up to their Big Day attempt on Friday, April 27.
“I’m trying to temper my optimism, but at this point I’d be very surprised if we don’t break the record,” Iliff said hours before the Big Day dash began. Unless, he warned, something disastrous happened. And indeed, this bigger, bolder Big Day route had a few tricks up its sleeve.

Big Day 2012 began at midnight with a Yellow-crowned Night Heron at Brackenridge City Park in San Antonio, then a sweep through the city that included a nesting robin beneath a streetlight at the Botanical Gardens, a flashlight scan across the darkness at Mitchell Lake that yielded a swimming Least Grebe (as well as calling Barn and Great Horned Owls), and a bevy of ducks in the moonlight at Miller’s Pond Park that included Canvasbacks, Redheads, Wood Ducks, and Northern Pintails. Three Sapsuckers also heard an Elf Owl at Miller’s Pond Park, but the other two missed it. Little did the team know then how crucial that Elf Owl would be in the day’s final tally.

At daybreak, the Sapsuckers scooted west toward the town of Uvalde, an area rich in birds with ranges mostly in Mexico. But notching each of these birds presented logistical difficulties, as they were scattered some distance apart. During scouting, Iliff had drawn up a plan to connect the dots between the birds, timed to when they began singing at dawn—a Tropical Kingbird at 6:20 a.m., a Green-tailed Towhee at 6:55 a.m., then a Ringed Kingfisher that regularly flew by the same spot at Chalk Bluff Park at 7:08 a.m. The Sapsuckers arrived at 7:04, and waited anxiously. But the kingfisher didn’t show. The team spent a precious half-hour at Chalk Bluff, scooping up a Rufous-capped Warbler that had been sourced during the scout week (a Mexican bird and Texas rarity, one of the very few records of this species in the state) and an unexpected American Pipit, but alas, no Ringed Kingfisher ever showed. From there, the team rolled into the Uvalde Fish Hatchery, with a huge assist from the hatchery manager, who granted the team special access to pass through the gates and pick up Cinnamon Teal, Ring-necked Duck, and Yellow-rumped Warbler—three species that the team wouldn’t see anywhere else during the day.

Next up, the team made the fateful decision to go for a Chihuahuan Raven at the Uvalde City Dump. They pursued one to the top of the landfill, though all five members failed to see it. Then team member Jessie Barry heard a whishing sound, like the sound of rushing air. A nail protruded from a rapidly deflating tire. And the spare tire in their rental car wouldn’t fit. Time to panic? Time to call it quits and try again the following day? Not for team captain Chris Wood. “There are no ‘re-dos’ in Big Day,” said Wood. “A hockey team couldn’t get into the Stanley Cup playoffs, then decide they’re having a bad day and they want to try again tomorrow. Same thing with Big Day.”

Instead, the Sapsuckers improvised, pulling into Garza’s Radiator Shop in Uvalde and doing some fast-talking. Wood convinced the repair man to do a quick fix on the their tire. “Evidently, he likes birds,” Wood said. Teammate Andrew Farnsworth sprinted 2 miles to the nearest ATM. And Iliff, Barry, and Tim Lenz huddled around their computer to recalibrate the route. Within 30 minutes—not quite a NASCAR pit stop, but a quick turnaround for a car shop—the Sapsuckers were back on the road. They had to drop a few locations from their route due to the delay, which cost them birds.  But soon the team was in the Hill Country, where they nailed Black-capped Vireo, Golden-cheeked Warbler, and Varied Bunting in short order. Iliff called in a Road Runner, and by 11:08 the team was leaving the Hill Country for Houston—30 minutes behind schedule, but at roughly 150 birds for the day, a little ahead of where they had hoped to be on their Big Day list thus far.

On the four-hour drive to Houston, long-distance spotting specialist Farnsworth sat in the back of the car, picking out soaring birds high in the sky and IDing them for his teammates—Swallow-tailed Kite, Mississippi Kite, Cooper’s Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk.  “Franklin’s Gull!” he yelled out at one point. Quickly the team pulled over to the side of the highway, and while the black specks in the sky were difficult to distinguish individually, their formation clearly signaled Franklin’s Gull. Then, Farnsworth yelled again: “Fire ants!” The Sapsuckers were inadvertently standing atop a fire ant nest, a painful price, yet worth it, for a bonus bird that migrates at high altitudes and often flies right over Texas.
Near Houston, the Sapsuckers met with more misfortune. Rice fields that had been flooded with water, and waterfowl, just a day earlier were now almost completely dried up. A flock of 25 Hudsonian Godwits, which had seemed a sure thing, were now gone. The team was still able to pick up a couple shorebirds pecking around in the muck, Wilson’s Phalarope and Baird’s Sandpiper, and another rice field nearby yielded a Buff-breasted Sandpiper and an American Golden-Plover. But again, the team found its list of probable birds shrinking, little by little. At Bear Creek Park in Houston, which provided a bit of Piney Woods habitat in the route, the Sapsuckers hit on eastern species including three woodpeckers (Downy, Red-bellied, and Red-headed) and Prothonotory and Pine Warblers, but missed on Great Crested Flycatcher. The misses were adding up.

So was the traffic in Houston. Still 30 minutes behind their schedule, the Sapsuckers were hitting rush hour. Thankfully, Farnsworth used driving skills honed in Manhattan to weave through the gridlock and reach the route’s most critical point—the ferry to Port Bolivar. Miss that 4:30 connection, and Big Day would be hopelessly lost. The team arrived 15 minutes early, with enough time for the authorities to conduct a full inspection of this suspicious-looking car filled with five people with binoculars. The team netted a Magnificent Frigatebird during the crossing, and the ferry arrived in port one minute early, the first lucky break for the Sapsuckers in several hours.

At Bolivar Flats, the team marched down the beach and racked up several species of gulls and terns, along with a Lesser Scaup. In trees just off the beach, the team found a cluster of migrant eastern birds, such as Rose-breated Grosbeak, Indigo Bunting, and Baltimore Orioles. Things were looking up, though no American White Pelican on the beach was a notable miss. At High Island, a legendary spot for migratory songbirds, the Sapsuckers invested 75 minutes and chalked up more than 15 species, including Cerulean, Magnolia, and Blackpoll warblers.

But then, the sun went down, the winds picked up, and the birding came to a grinding halt. The team moved on to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge to listen for marsh birds in the dark. Over the final three hours, the team only added five more birds, including Seaside Sparrow, Yellow and King Rail, and Common Gallinule. At 11:56 p.m., a Purple Gallinule called once, and that was it. The final bird for Friday, April 27. Thirty seconds after midnight, several gallinules erupted into a chorus of laughter. And Team Sapsucker laughed right along with them. “It had been a tough day, and we all needed a good laugh,” said Wood. “Those Purple Gallinules definitely lived up to their European common name, ‘Laughing Moorhen.’”

Minutes later, Iliff sat in the dark with his laptop computer, his face illuminated by the glow of his screen depicting a spreadsheet of the day’s score. Jubilation at first—the initial count came in at 265 species, a new record!—then mellowed into the realization that the team had to subtract some birds due to the 95 percent rule. The rule states that 95 percent of the birds on a team’s list must be seen by everyone on the team. Upon double-checking the numbers, Iliff realized that that Elf Owl in San Antonio wasn’t unanimous. Off the list it came, and the day’s tally dropped to 264—not a new record, but a repeat of the record.

Had Joe DiMaggio followed up his record hitting streak with another 56-game run, certainly no one would have been unimpressed. Likewise, the Sapsuckers proved again this year how remarkable their record of 264 species in 24 hours really is. And, they showed that their new Texas Triangle is the most bird-laden circuit in North America.

“It’s definitely the best route in the country,” said Farnsworth. “We proved that there are higher numbers of birds along this route than the one to Corpus Christi.

“And, we’ll definitely be coming back to Texas again next year!”

Though next time, they might avoid the dump.

--Gus Axelson