No-Show Woodpecker
If you can do a big year in your backyard, why not that other classic birding game–the big day?
Noticing that my highest bird count for the yard this month was 26 species, and that Feb 25th was going to be the warmest day of the week, I decided to try and break my record by spending as much time birding in the yard as possible that day–a backyard big day!
I got a slow start, as birds were slow to appear in the morning and with chores I wasn’t able to spend much time outside the first couple hours of the day. But when I walked the kids to the bus, Pine Siskins appeared in the trees and I got photos to add them to the photo big year total. Over the next half hour I added Pileated Woodpecker, Turkey Vulture, White-breasted Nuthatch, and Ring-billed Gull. By 11:40am I was at 23 species. A new record looked very doable, with 13 species seen in February not yet having appeared for the day.
While the temperature inched up from a start of 15F to 31F, the birding remained cold and slow. Painfully slow. Over the next few hours I was only able to add a distant flyby American Robin and a brief glimpse of a Cooper’s Hawk blitzing the yard. By 5pm I had to run some errands, the sun was setting, and I was sick of being outside in the cold. So no new record.
The day did highlight how important those first few hours of the morning are to building a good species total. Also how crazy the vagaries of birding can be–I missed Hairy Woodpecker, which has been seen in my yard every day this week. Also no flyover gulls, so only managed distant Ring-billed and no Herring Gulls. The Pine Siskins were the highlight of the morning, and that was 8:30am. After that, it was pretty humdrum. Even with many hours of extra effort, I wasn’t able to top my previous record.
Such is the life of a big day birder. Big days don’t always go as planned. The birds don’t always cooperate. Even in your own backyard!
