2023 Brant County Big Year 200

 

Brant County Big Year 209(Ellen) 210(Jerry)

In 2022 I ended the year with 199 species seen in Brant County, and Jerry managed to get 200.  Did I mention I am competitive? and it bothered me, a teeny bit. I could easily have got the extra bird but I was lazy and let him go out birding many times while I sat on the couch. He also managed to be 1 bird ahead of me in Ontario and Canada (a Louisiana Waterthrush he saw at Pelee and it was gone by the time I got bins on it) so I vowed it would not happen again. I would commit to getting out to bird every time he did, become his shadow, and I would get 200 in the County in 2023.  

Normally we would start the new year on Lake Ontario ticking all the wintering ducks but this year we stuck in Brant County and tried to see all the wintering birds we could.  By the end of February we had 70 species, including sightings and pictures of Long-eared, Barred, and Eastern Screech Owls, all seen in an eight day period.

And to be clear, we didn't find the birds, we were told and shown where they were by other birders.  You always will depend on the kindness of other birders to help you out, even if you are actively competing with each other. The birders in Brant always help each other even while we battle for those top spots.

Our 100th species came on April 5, a Vesper Sparrow freshly arrived from the South to set up nesting for the summer. We took two weeks to head to Florida the end of April to mop up some birds we missed on previous trips. May is the height of migration and the birds arrive fast and furious, despite still spending some time at Pelee we managed to be at 184 by the end of May.

The birding slows in the summer, nesting birds are quieter, migration is over, the heat of July means quiet forests. We added only 6 birds in June AND July. August usually brings the shorebirds but this summer was wet and lots of rain meant the ponds that are normally almost dry for the shorebirds still had high water and so only 4 birds were added in August as the usual shorebirds passed by Brant County. Highlights from the summer were a very rare Henslow's Sparrow singing in a Conservation area close by.  Only a few birders were made aware of this bird so as not to disturb it.  A quick evening chase after a text from a fellow birder netted us a Black Tern, seen for only a few minutes before it faded away into the twilight.

By August I had a list of the possible species I could still get and we started to focus on those birds, a few I had missed in the spring and a few would arrive through Fall migration.  We were trying to bird every day for at least a few hours. I was at 194 after the Black Tern. Only 6 to go.  The first two weeks of September yielded 5 more and suddenly I was at 199. I knew there were still many more possible species I would see, but what bird would be 200? On September 27 we headed to Brant Waterworks Park, a lovely trail system that takes hours to loop the 8kms.  And there it was way back off the trail but totally identifiable - Blue-headed Vireo!  Number 200 and, as it happens, one of my favourite species. Jerry could not get a picture but this is a Blue-headed Vireo from another sighting.

Fifteen minutes later Jerry spotted something in the underbrush, had his camera up and he said, Gray-cheeked Thrush. It was the other bird I was hoping to get, I quickly got bins on the area and saw movement after a bit but it was a Swainson's Thrush. These two species are not an easy ID. When we first started birding we spent hours agonizing over which was which. We are much better now and more confident and Jerry is sure he had a Gray-cheeked. I spent many minutes, sifting through numerous birds, there was one that was a possibility but I could not be sure with the bird staying in the shadows. Suddenly we were back in the same situation as last year, despite being his shadow, he was ahead of me by 1 bird, AGAIN. But this time, I was not bothered(as much), I had my 200 birds!  

This is where the honour system in birding plays a role. I could have just added Gray-cheeked too, I was standing right beside him, but I really didn't see it. Each birder has to decide what they are comfortable doing or allowing on their list. I want to see the bird, hopefully enough to ID what it was, or hear it and recognize the song. If I had seen the bird fly away and Jerry said that was a Gray-cheeked I would have probably added it, but not seeing which bird he had seen meant I was not going to add it. Jerry and I birding together is a double-check for most things we see.  We can question each other and we still, both of us, get excited and make wrong ID's but usually with two people the chances are less.

I added another 5 birds in October and one nice rarity, a White-winged Crossbill in November moving the needle to 206 for me and 207 for Jerry. Now there were less possibilities left as November moved to December. I missed a Golden Eagle during their migration, I missed a rare Red Phalarope, kept dipping (missing) on a Northern Shrike although we checked out numerous ebird sightings of them and drove areas multiple times where we have seen them in the past. December 17 and not a bird had been added since November 5.  A birding slump I hoped would not continue into the new year.

A Christmas Miracle occurred and the slump was broken when we added Red Crossbill to our lists on Christmas morning.  It was our 3rd attempt to see the birds, a rarity from the boreal forests north of us.  There were about 20 calling and feeding in the spruce trees at a small Conservation spot just around the corner from home so we did not even have to travel far. Exciting and the slump was over!

On Boxing Day we headed out in the drizzle for what felt like our 20th attempt at a Northern Shrike.  We visited a site 10 minutes from home where there have been a number of reports and where we have looked a few times with no luck.  As we headed into the field Jerry spotted it at the top of a bare tree, its normal behavior as it hunts small birds and mice, and just like that, two birds added in two days! There were a few high fives and woo-hoo's happening!  On December 28 a report of a Little Gull hit the Discord channel for Brant and we went to have a look, we found the birds easily in a field with hundreds of gulls but sadly they were technically in Haldimand County.  We were standing on the road that divides Brant County and Haldimand.  Once again the ethics of birding came into play and we counted them for Haldimand, not Brant County. I thought that might be the end for sightings but on the 29th a Long-tailed Duck was found and we saw it on the 30th to put us finally at 209 and 210.

Brant county had 231 species seen this year with a tie for top birder between Bill Lamond and Jason Pizzey with 221, Jerry in second with 210, and myself and Jenny Pizzey in 3rd with 209. We saw 90% of the birds seen in 2023. I'm well satisfied with that number.  Onto Ontario and 300.

Before the birding begins - The Planning and Tools for a Big Year

 

Back in 2013 when we first started listing, we did it under the premise of a "Big Year" as a bit of a joke. It was a goal to get us off the couch and get back out into nature. We traveled with a hard cover bird book in our backpack and cheap binoculars. We sometimes spent hours on a trail flipping through the book trying to find a match to the bird we were seeing in front of us.  We had no idea of how many species actually passed through Ontario. We signed up with the Ontario Field Ornithologists and the Hamilton Naturalists Club and went on walks and listened to all these expert birders soaking in as much knowledge as we could. At the end of the year we had seen 210 birds in Ontario and 81 of them were lifers (a species seen for the first time).

Now, 11 years later, we will start a proper Big Year with a goal of seeing over 300 species, the accepted benchmark for Big Years in Ontario.  In any given year around 370 species are seen in Ontario with 300 being about 81% of the total.  I've spent the last few months creating excel spread sheets, calendars and lists to figure out how best to tackle getting to 300. There are many tools at my disposal now that provide a plethora of information making the job of finding a specific bird easier than ever before.

Ebird is a fantastic free resource that allows any birder to upload what birds they see and allows others to see those lists. There are 935,000 birders worldwide using ebird and they have added 87 million complete checklists for 10,829 species of birds in the world.  I don't plan any trips without doing the research on ebird of what birds I can see and where I can see them. Ebird also keeps track of all your sightings and totals for County, Provincial, Country, Continent and World as well as specific patches you can set up, like your backyard. When we started in 2013 we used paper and pencil to note the birds we saw now the app is on our phones. Ebird also tracks the top 100 birders for all those geographic areas.  Ebird is where I started my research for Ontario.

Usually birders will start with ranking the birds from the easiest to see to the most difficult. I ranked mine a bit differently. I have an Excel sheet with 142 birds ranked as the common, easy birds to see without any extra effort other than be out birding. Then I ranked another 86 birds seen during spring migration. Most of these same birds will come through again in the fall giving us a second chance to get any we miss in the spring as well as 5 birds that are usually only seen in the fall. We also have the chance to catch some of these birds (warblers) on their nesting grounds if we don't mind battling mosquitoes. Then there are about 55 birds that we need to make special trips to get and usually end up seeing or hearing. These trips are to Algonquin for boreal species, Carden Alvar, Rainy River, Ottawa, Northern Ontario and Amherst Island. Those lists total 288 leaving me needing to see at least 12 rarities to get to the 300 IF I see every single one of the 288, and realistically, most years, there is a bird or two that you just don't seem to be able to track down. Birds are fickle that way, they don't care you are doing a big year. Despite our knowledge, technology, social media for instant contact of a rarity, it still does just come down to timing. The bird has to be there when we are there. Luckily, there are usually over 40 rarities that show up in any given year giving me plenty of chances to get past the 300. Unfortunately, most of the rarities also show up in May when we will be trying to get all the spring migrants coming through Pelee. There will likely be some tough choices to make about what to chase and where to be come May.

The strategy for most Big Years is to start the year getting as many rarities that are hanging around first. Chase, chase and chase will be the first week in January, assuming there are rarities to chase. We will see the common birds as we chase the rarities. I am currently monitoring the rarities in the province to see what ones might still be here on January 1 and then we will head to the rarest of these first and then on to any others that remain. My strategy is to try and bird the area for the day or even two days when we chase a rarity rather than just drive hours for one bird. I want to try and be somewhat "green" in our approach, while fully aware that chasing birds around the province is not a "green" activity at all. Hey, we drive a plug-in hybrid, so its a bit more green...

As well as the ranking of birds I have a calendar in Excel detailing each week with notes as to what species might be seen at a particular time.  Many migrating species only pass through Ontario in a narrow window and I cannot afford to miss those species. An example is the Whimbrels that migrate through Toronto every year with their peak numbers May 24-26.  While you can see them elsewhere along the lakes it is sporadic and random so guess where I will be on May 24? 

The next research was to put together a Word Document and look at each uncommon species and find out the best place in the province with the highest probability to see that bird.  Ebird helps with this with their Illustrated Checklists for every birding hotspot showing what species you expect to see each week of the year and the percentage probability of the bird being there.  As an example, Buff-breasted Sandpiper migrates through in August and sometimes we can see one a short-distance from our home but it is not reliable and it's usually a very poor scope view so my research tells me that I have a 77.8% chance of seeing one on 10th Line in Beeton the 4th week in August.  That info is now on my Excel Calendar and the Word document Birds to Chase.

Another indispensable tool for birding is our Ontario Bird Alert on the Discord App. The App was started, I believe, for video gamers to be able to chat with each other while they gamed and I assume a birder thought it could be used for another purpose - sharing rarities and information to the second about where birds are being seen. Posters can share a pin to the exact location they are currently seeing the bird, info about where to park, and trail conditions all can be shared while you are in the field providing the cell service is good.  

I have signed up for notifications for all the rare bird alerts for each County in Ontario and will be monitoring what people are posting. In this way, a Big Year is not a solitary endeavour, I will be very dependant on other birders finding cool rarities so that I can then try to "chase" or "twitch" them. I have also signed up for ebird emails detailing rarities posted as not every birder uses Discord and ebird will also email me a list of the birds I need to see within a geographic region with the checklist as to the details of where and when the bird was seen.

The tools Jerry and I take into the field have changed from 2013. Iphones are now indispensable with apps to record our checklists on ebird, Discord for alerts, Sibleys Field Guide and IBird Pro for identifying. We will also use Merlin, another free app that alerts you to what birds are singing or calling around you. While not 100% accurate it is a useful tool for us as we still do not know a lot of bird calls and when something pops up on the screen we can stop and check around until we find the bird. We never use Merlin as our only source to add a bird to a checklist. We always have to hear the bird ourselves and confirm the song and/or see the bird. 

We both have Vortex HD Razors 8x42, an excellent binocular with a lifetime guarantee. A good thing as Jerry is on his 3rd pair in 6 years, having damaged 2 pairs in falls. Our scope is a used Swarovski that still competes with the best scopes out there. Jerry has updated his camera equipment a few times since 2013 and now uses a Sony RX10 for photographs and with its long zoom doubles as a scope when we are hiking if a bird is outside our binocular range. I'll be using the Nikon Coolpix P900 for video. The plan is to get a picture/video or audio of every bird we see next year.

The planning is done, the equipment ready, the countdown to January 1 has started....

 

A Trio of Big Years - the numbers

Ovenbird

I have been intrigued with the idea of Big Years since first reading and then seeing the movie The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson way back.  A big year is a personal challenge among birders to identify as many species of birds by sight or sound in a single calendar year and a certain geographic area. It is on the honour system so many birders try to capture a picture of all the birds they see for irrefutable proof.  I'm naturally competitive and it has a crazy kind of appeal BUT I know trying to break records would not be good for my mental and physical health.  The stress I would put myself under would no doubt end in someone's death LOL and not necessarily my own!  Still many birders choose not to try for the records and to just compete against themselves with arbitrary rules. So, early this year I came up with an idea, three consecutive Big Years of 200, 300 and 400.  Two hundred species seen in Brant County in year 1, three hundred species seen in Ontario in year 2 and four hundred species seen in Canada in year 3. Crazy huh?  But cool, right?  They say when you are retired you need to have goals!

White-crowned Sparrow

Back in 2013 when we first started listing, only 187 species of birds were seen in Brant County and the highest ebirder had only 113 species!  There are not a lot of birders in Brant County so those of us here have taken on the mission to bird more in the county. It was not until 2016 that 206 species were seen in the county and the top birder was still only seeing 164.  Finally in 2020 there were 234 species seen with 3 birders over 200 and then in 2021 Bill Lamond saw 226 out of the 237 birds seen!  Since then there are usually 4-5 birders that manage to hit the 200 mark. Not super hard, but it requires a lot of days birding, in a small geographic area and you have to chase rarities in order to hit the 200.  I have seen over 200 species this year and I'll tell that story in another blog...

Eastern Screech Owl

In Ontario there is a large population of birders (thousands) who are super keen and 300 species is the benchmark for many Big Years. In a given year there are around 370 species seen in Ontario and most years 10-12 people hit 300. In 2022 many people decided to do Big Years (COVID ended) so there were a record 21 people over 300 and a new record set of 359 species seen by Kiah Jasper. This year the numbers are back to the norm with 12 birders hitting the 300 mark so far and the top birder seeing 328 species so far. 

You would think that if I can get 300 in Ontario then 400 across all of Canada should be easy but the larger the geographic area the harder to physically get to the birds. Plus, the birds you need, inevitably, are seen in the other provinces at the same time so you have to make decisions about when to hit spring migration in BC without missing too much of spring migration in Ontario. I'm also not planning on getting on planes to chase a rare bird in BC only to hear of another out in Newfoundland so 400 will be a real challenge with just driving across Canada to the east and west.  In Canada, 530 species are usually seen and in most years only 1-4 people manage to cross the 400 mark. Currently an astonishing new record is being set by Bruce DiLabio with 480 species seen this year and he is the only birder over 400. The previous record was 457!  It's a vast territory to cover and will be the most challenging year for sure.

My previous best numbers for these three locations happened in 2022 because we travelled out west and birded along the way.

Brant County 199 species 

Ontario 285 species 

Canada 370 species 

See, I've been close, 200,300,400 are completely doable with lots of planning and good birding karma coming back to us.

Stay tuned...we start January 1!