Ebird is such a cool resource. If you want to know how you’re doing compared to other birders, you can call up a list of the top 100 birders, by number of species reported, in several different categories. Each list can be created by World, Country, State, or County. If you’re not in the top 100, your name doesn’t show up on the list, but it gives you a numerical ranking for where you stand. (On April 24th, I was number 1,324 in the world. I have a ranking, but my number has a comma in it.) Every year I jump up in the rankings after the Big Day, but this is crazy. Before the Big Day, I was number 112 in the U.S. After, I’m number 45. I jump that far up in the rankings not because I suddenly got to be a better birder, but because I went birding with a better birder. I wonder about the logic of that sometimes; is it fair to report all the birds I see when I go out with Jon, because I see and hear so many more when I’m out with him than when I’m out by myself? I rationalize it, and say I should count all these birds because “it’s just a matter of degree”. If a person goes out with any friend, they’ll see more birds. That’s just the way it works; if one person sees a bird the other doesn’t, he’ll call the other person’s attention to it. Is it my fault my friend happens to be a birding beast? I don’t think so. I’m counting everything!
2017 Big Day
Midnight out on the boardwalk at the Birding Center marsh in Port Aransas listening for rails. It’s calm and quiet, just like we need so we can hear; no wind. We got sora, common gallinule, and our target bird: Virginia rail. A good start. The Virginia rail is a new year-bird for me. On to Cove Harbor to listen for Clapper rail. I made a map of all the places we went. 2017 Big Day map. Heard the rail! River road for King Rail. (Different rails like different habitat.) Got it. Still really dark. Drove to Duke Bridge for barred owl. Heard it before we even got out of the car! Drove west to Choke Canyon State Park and surrounding area to listen for western birds at sunrise and see fulvous whistling ducks when it got light. This is going really well. We’ve already seen or heard 85 birds, and now I’ve got 4 new year-birds. Not only are we going to have a Big Day, my year-list is going to get a lot bigger too. Back east to Riverside Park in Victoria. That was good for Mississippi kites, red-shouldered hawks, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-throated vireo, blue jay, and a pileated woodpecker landed right in front of us! We’re at 115 birds and it’s not even noon. Another 5 year-birds. 125 birds by noon and we’re picking up steam. It was good at Goose Island State Park. Now we’re seeing coastal birds. I’ve gotten another 9 year-birds. A stop at Sunset Lake Park, and we’re off to the middle of Corpus Christi for migrants by 2pm. Spirits are high, as they always are at this time of day. All we need is a good migrant year to have a really big day. This is also the point in the day where we usually have a flat spot and things slow way down, but not this day. This day the migrants were great. We arrived at Blucher at 2:30 and started racking up migrants. Worm-eating warblers. Hooded, swainson’s magnolia, black and white and Kentucky warblers. We’re at 170 birds. We moved on to Rose Hill Cemetery and kept on finding warblers, flycatchers, and tanagers. Cerulean warbler and blackburnian warbler. 180 birds. It’s all good. Time to head out to the island. More migrants. Almost all the shorebirds we needed. A whimbrel. Every place we stopped was good. Every stop added birds to the big-day list. We finished back at the Birding Center in Port Aransas with a marsh wren at 8pm. Nueces County was really good to the Big Day list and my year-list as well. I got 23 new year-birds, just from Nueces County, for a total of 41 new year-birds in just one day! I already had a pretty good year-list going, but this is fantastic. The results: This is an annual competition, consisting of teams of two birders each. It just happens that Jon and I are the only ones that know about the competition, and the only team to ever compete. Our old record was 207. (We did 220 once, but that was not really the same kind of big day. For that one we did 24 consecutive hours, but spread over two days so we could cover more habitat.) For this for-real Big Day, we did 550 miles of driving, with 26 stops, 20 consecutive hours of birding, and demolished our old record with 218 birds! Big Days are not about taking pictures, but how could we talk this much about birding without any pictures of birds? I’ll put up several pictures, then put the key at the end. You can see how many you got right.
Key:Female Summer TanagerSoraWorm-eating WarblerPectoral SandpiperBay-breasted WarblerLeast BitternWhimbrelRose-breasted GrosbeakGull-billed TernSooty Tern
Key:Female Summer TanagerSoraWorm-eating WarblerPectoral SandpiperBay-breasted WarblerLeast BitternWhimbrelRose-breasted GrosbeakGull-billed TernSooty Tern A barefoot run on the beach
The scrunchy scratchy seaweed feels good on the soles of my feet. (Running doesn’t feel as good as it used to though. I walk more than run now.) Drove to Mustang Island on Sunday. Got in a little sleep before the midnight start of the annual birding Big Day with Jon on Monday. We had an awesome time and finished exhausted and severely in need of sleep. Got in a solid ten last night with some catching–up and resting–up today. Took a walk out on the jetty.
Splashy parts on the jetty are as close as we get to tide pools here.
More tomorrow about the Big Day. Intermittent Fasting
The most common current form is referred to as 16:8 fasting. I’ve seen a couple references to this recently, touting its health benefits. I’m not a big fan of fasting, but not opposed to it; I decided to give it a look. There is no end to the information available about this on-line. It’s the hottest new thing! It’s pretty simple; eat during a certain amount of time, and don’t eat the rest of it. When you do eat, eat healthy food, and eat as much as you want. Eat lots of protein and go easy on the starches. No calorie counting. No fakey low-fat, or sugar-free foods. It promotes weight loss, helps with diabetes, reduces cancer and heart disease, extends your lifespan, reduces stress, reduces inflammation, and detoxes your body. Amazing. They suggest trying this for two days a week. Serious adherents do it every day! I had to think about the timing of fasting and eating. If you quit eating at 8 o’clock at night, go to sleep, wake up, and don’t eat until noon, that’s the 16 part; that’s a 16 hour fast. Then eat lunch and dinner, all you want, and stop eating again by 8 o’clock. As I see it, this revolutionary new eating approach could be called by a different name as well; Skipping Breakfast! Years ago, I figured out that I felt better for the rest of the day if I skipped breakfast (the most important meal of the day) and didn’t eat until lunch. Who knew, all these years, most of my adult life, I have been doing intermittent fasting, specifically the 16:8 plan! A man ahead of his time….
Why would it be?
I don’t want to eat hot stuff. I let the morning cup of coffee sit for twenty minutes before I take a sip, so I won’t burn my mouth. I don’t eat a hot dinner until it quits steaming. Sometime I can get Judy to put my food on a plate, then finish up everything else before she serves herself, so I can eat my food at the same time as hers. But spicy hot? I crave that tabasco burn. More is better. I want to feel the residual burn in my stomach when I’m done too! Judy, who wants her food and coffee as hot as it can be, wants nothing to do with spicy hot.