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The Big Day

 Jon set up the Big Day schedule as a Google Map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=212295519158563322043.0004f745ce0cea06b6f0d&msa=0&ll=28.350317,-96.888428&spn=0.895546,1.674042 We’ve done this every year for a bunch of years now.  I’ve tried just staying up the day before until midnight, then doing the 24 hours from there.  No sense going to sleep if you have to be up by midnight, right?  Wrong!  That leaves me up for two days straight.  The sleep-deprivation gets me before the second day is done.  It works better if I get a few hours of sleep the day before, between dinner and midnight, so I’ll turn in early tonight.  I’ll be up again before tomorrow.  Jon and I will meet at the birding center at midnight to listen for teal and rails, then off we go.  We’ll be well into it by dawn and gaining momentum for the day. More suspects: Wood Thrush Indigo Buntings  A Ruddy Turnstone with his dancing clothes on And a very excited Ruddy Duck  
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The Big Day is coming!

 No, I’m not having a religious moment.  This is the Birding Big Day.  Jon and I.  We’re set for Saturday, starting Friday night at midnight.  24 hours straight through.  How many species of birds can we identify in that time?  We can identify them by sight or sound; it doesn’t matter.  It just matters that we’re sure. Left to my own devices, I can go find 100 birds in a day this time of year.  We expect to see 200 or more on Saturday.  The first hundred birds are easy.  Seeing twice as many birds in one day is a lot more than twice as hard.  I don’t think 10 times as hard would adequately describe it.  “Totally impossible” would be more accurate for me on my own.  For the second hundred birds, you really have to know what you’re doing.  Lucky for me, Jon is a professional birder.  He guides people to all the hard-to-find birds, so he is perfectly prepared for this.  All I have to do is try to keep up. In the meantime, here are some photos of usual suspects. Green Heron Nutria(This doesn’t count as a bird.) Sora Scarlet Tanager (Male and female.)  
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Migration

 There are two warblers that are really easy for me to miss each year, the Worm-eating and the Swainson’s.  They are both primarily ground-dwelling.  When we were at High Island a couple weeks ago, the Worm-eating was probably the most abundant warbler there.  They were too far away for any good pictures though. Here in the Corpus Christi area, I walked right up on a Swainson’s Warbler.  Got them both already.  It’s a good migration.