Bird-A-Thon 2018

I have been sharing the progress of my Thoreauvian Big Year – an attempt to see as many local bird species as possible over the course of the year. The other main exercise in list-making practiced by birders is the Big Day. The basic concept is simple enough – see as many birds as possible in a single day – but there are various subspecies of Big Day, including limitations of place (single county, “Big Sits” from a 17 foot circle), time (24-hour, 6-hour, 4-hour), or transportation mode (i.e. no cars). Big Days of a more fun and less intensely competitive nature are often integrated into fundraisers known as Bird-A-Thons, where teams of birders attempt a Big Day of varying levels of ambition, recruiting friends and family to support the sponsoring organization with a donation often linked to the number of species seen.

This year, I and the other owners and staff of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato participated in a Bird-A-Thon to support Point Blue Conservation Science, a North Bay institution founded in 1965 as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. (If you’re reading this in October 2018, you can still donate to support the Wild Birders Unlimited in this year’s Bird-A-Thon here.) In addition to supporting conservation and climate science and nature education, this was also a great opportunity to spend time with our friends putting our core philosophy of enjoying local nature into practice as we counted birds at several sites in Novato and San Rafael.

Here’s the quick story and highlights of our route this year. This was the first time we’ve done this and we’ll take away some useful lessons on how the planning could have been improved as far as maximizing the species count goes. If you’d like to see 100+ species in Northeast Marin in a day, or would just generally like to know what’s flying in our neighborhood in October, you may find some useful tips here.

Pre-Dawn

In serious, competitive Big Days, a small team of intense people start birding before the sun rises and continue until dark or later, depending on how many owls they are still trying to find. In our more casual, maximally-inclusive version, we didn’t require everyone to assemble pre-dawn. But the nocturnal hours at Jack’s abode in the foothills of Big Rock Ridge did yield both a Great Horned Owl and a Western Screech-Owl calling into the darkness and we’re counting them!

Bahia Lagoon

Our first field location was the Bahia Lagoon, a good spot for waterbirds (though better in the heart of winter as far as ducks are concerned), raptors, and open country songbirds. A few birds that we saw here and nowhere else during the day included western meadowlarks, chubby yellow birds of open meadows, and cedar waxwings, roaming winter berry-eaters that were flying on the edge of the adjacent neighborhood. Other notable birds included kites and harriers, a belted kingfisher seemingly checking out nesting burrows, marsh wrens, and a resounding early morning chorus of golden-crowned sparrows.

Rush Creek

Rush Creek has the bird-a-thoning advantage of having multiple vantage points that are more or less instantly accessible. Our first quick stop at Bahia Dr. and Topaz Dr. offered our first woodland birds (acorn woodpeckers, titmice), mudflat birds (curlews, godwits, and our only semipalmated plovers of the day), and a few birds from the freshwater pond (red-winged blackbirds and a calling sora). An excursion into Cemetery Marsh had a few additional species (shovelers, avocets, dowitchers, pelicans), but given that nothing that was exclusively found there and it took some walking time, this leg will probably be axed from future versions. (Unless I can assemble a biking team to speed up the transit!)

Lastly, a quick look into the main inundated area adjacent to Binford Road produced a great many more birds in overall volume, but not necessarily variety, with flocks of hundreds of ducks and black-necked stilts. Only American Wigeon was exclusively found here today, though there may well have been some California Gulls if we had worked a little harder at distant gull ID instead of telling ourselves “oh, we’ll see some later.”

Indian Tree

Indian Tree Open Space Preserve was planned as our main woodland stop of the day, with trails that pass fairly quickly from open woodland, to denser woodland, to small patches of redwood forest, as well as offering some views of open hillsides and airspace towards Stafford Lake. Exclusive finds for the day included a fox sparrow lurking in a shaded blackberry patch, Steller’s jays calling through the forest, a hairy woodpecker in close proximity, a sharp-shinned hawk popping out of the woods, and a distant golden eagle soaring over the hilltops.

Stafford Lake

We had lunch here and looked out towards Stafford Lake in hope of some additional ducks, shorebirds, or raptors. Lunch was pleasant (more leisurely and relaxed than typical of more intense Big Days), but the bird count was limited, contributing no exclusive species. As it turned out, the waterbirds were all duplicated elsewhere and we would have been better off allocating some more time in the woodland. Next time, I think we’ll decamp to the even nicer picnic area at Olompali State Historic Park instead.

Loch Lomond Marina

Discouraged by the underperforming Stafford Lake and feeling skeptical of reaching our goal of a nice, round 100 species, we headed south to San Rafael with diminished expectations. Fortunately, the Loch Lomond Marina exceeded them, delivering most of our target birds of the rocky shoreline as well as some bonus birds we did not plan on. Dependable specialty birds here include black oystercatcher, black turnstone, spotted sandpiper, and western gull. Less dependable birds that graciously showed up included brown pelican, surf scoter, pelagic cormorant, and best of all two brants, sea geese that only wander into the Bay in low numbers. We were back on schedule! We were also rather hot and dehydrated, but this site is conveniently adjacent to Andy’s Market, which managed to keep the Wild Birders staggering onward.

Las Gallinas Ponds

In some ways, this is the premier birding site of our area. Few places rival it for assembling a list of 50 species or so in a few hours of fall or winter birding. By this stage of the day, however, we were only able to give it a limited amount of time and did not make it beyond the first of the three ponds. Still, we added our only Vaux’s swift, American kestrel, ruddy ducks, eared grebes, and American goldfinches of the day. But with our energy flagging, we failed to round up our hoped for common gallinule or common yellowthroat. It was seeming like a cruel fate had raised us up to within a hair’s breadth of our 100-species goal, only to deny us not one, but two birds tauntingly named as “common.”

Hamilton Wetlands

Daylight was fading, our dinner reservation was beckoning, and we were two species short. Our last hope was the Hamilton Wetlands, offering the most expansive tidal wetlands of the day. We limped up to the southern entrance to the Bay Trail and set up our scopes. Black-bellied plover! Forster’s tern! And what are those peeps? There are hundreds of them! Is there a western sandpiper? There must be! There is! 101 species!

The Total, Notable Misses, and Lessons Learned

We made it to our target, proving our number chosen primarily for its outstanding roundness to be a pretty good estimation of the number of bird species you can expect to see by visiting half a dozen well-chosen sites in Northeast Marin. The best finds of the day were mostly at Loch Lomond, where unpredictable coastal birds fortunately were in the mood for a trip into the Bay. Without them, we would have fallen short, having had some bad misses including woodland birds like chestnut-backed chickadee, hermit thrush, Hutton’s vireo, and Nuttall’s woodpecker; water birds such as California gull, common gallinule, common yellowthroat, and all swallows; and urban and neighborhood birds house sparrow and American robin. I would have expected ten more species there, but bad luck, inadequate diligence with gulls, and a slightly sub-optimal route left us scrambling to get over the 100-line.

Next time, I think we can make it to 100 without breaking a sweat by:

• Cutting some of our least productive areas (the Cemetery Marsh walking segment of Rush Creek; Stafford Lake picnic area)
• Increasing our woodland time (adjourning to Olompali for lunch time would probably do the trick)
• Budgeting a quick stop by the workplace we were avoiding to pick up house sparrow and California gulls at the ponds behind the shopping center
• Allowing more time for the richness of Las Gallinas, rather than cramming it into a late afternoon, low-energy 60 minutes.

As with my Thoreauvian Big Year, this exercise of counting local birds is valuable not so much for the honors and awards (no one’s giving us a trophy, and as for a cash prize, we actually were giving more money away for every species we found), but for the insights into our local bird populations. Counting makes you pay attention to details – where are certain birds found reliably? Where are other birds possible? Can I expect to see a certain species yet by this date? And by what efficiencies of navigation can I cram the maximum hours of birding into my day?

By these measures, our undertaking was a valuable educational experience. By that of raising funds for a worthy cause, it also succeeded. And by the crucial metric of time spent in nature with our friends, it was a resounding triumph.

The List: 101 Species