Snow Birds
One month down, 11 to go! By the end of January my backyard big year has 48 total birds for the yard, 33 birds photographed, and 21 birds sound recorded. I’ve spent over 100 hours birding in the yard, and many more inside listening to my OldBird21c microphone and watching the feeders.
After starting the year with 36 species on January 1, including 3 new birds for my yard list, I was very excited. January 2 brought 2 more new birds for the year. Then things slowed way down. I managed to see my 20 Bird Minimum Daily Requirement every day (except for my weekly Birding Sabbaths), but perhaps this wasn’t enough to get those rare flyovers.
Building 3 miles away on distant hillside.
I have one narrow through the trees scope-view of the valley and distant hills 3 miles to the north (photo on left)–and that’s where I saw my best new yard birds. I check out that view regularly each morning, but I haven’t been willing to spend hours staring through the scope hoping for something to fly by. So one strategy for February, when it isn’t too cold–spend more time outside and more time watching the distant hills for flybys.
I’ve been recording with my OldBird21c mic in the yard all day most days, and most nights when it isn’t snowing or too windy. There could be more bird species recorded on those recordings that I haven’t reviewed yet. That takes a long time, especially for the day time recordings when there are a lot of active calling birds. So I need to dedicate more time to reviewing the recordings for the audio big year.
As far as my rankings with other yard birders on eBird–I’m getting a bit of a slow start. Here are my results as of 30 January, before I added three more species on 31 January:
After adding the three birds on 31 January, I actually rank 59th for the year in the U.S. It’s a bit slower start than I’d hoped for, but I’m 4th in NJ and first in my county–not too bad for a yard with no real water feature to attract waterfowl. I will be pushing hard to get that U.S. ranking to go up this year.
