Big Year #7: The End

The penultimate report on my 2018 Thoreauvian Big Year came at the end of October: today is the final chapter! At that point, my year-long quest to observe as many birds as possible while traveling by foot or bike within a 10-mile radius of home had reached 194 species—tantalizingly close to my established target of 200 different birds. Did I make it? What did I learn? Was there any point to this quixotic endeavor? And what’s on the bird-counting agenda for 2019?

Late Additions: The Road to towards 200

195. 

     Tropical Kingbird: Once again, eBird and the local birding community came to my aid with the report of a tropical kingbird at Las Gallinas. This relative to our summer Western Kingbird is an irregular winter visitor to the Bay Area—not rare, but one that cannot be counted on in a given year in a given 10-mile radius, so I was glad to find it. This bird was particularly cooperative, flycatching from wires and treetops right around the Las Gallinas entrance for several days in a row in early November.
196. Herring Gull: I quickly followed that sighting up on November 6th with the addition of Herring Gull, the most common of the gulls I had missed the previous winter. As with many birders, I often find myself overlooking gulls and not taking the effort to comb through each flock to identify every individual. And I admit I did not find this one independently, but rather during a volunteer survey at the Hamilton Wetlands, where my friend Bill pointed it out: a good-sized gull with a vaguely marked head and a longer, red-marked bill compared to its ring-billed neighbors.
197. Hooded Merganser: The rest of November was less successful, with the remainder of fall migration passing without any more passing rarities. On December 4th, however, I added one of my bigger misses of the previous winter in the form of a Hooded Merganser, one of our less common and unevenly distributed diving ducks. In fact, it wasn’t a Hooded Merganser that I observed, but no fewer than 22 birds—all crammed into the compact ponds of the StoneTree Golf Course in Black Point. This is one of my favorite ducks and even without the satisfaction of adding them to the year list, I would have been very pleased to run into such a rambunctious crowd of hoodies.

     

198. Ferruginous Hawk: On 12/13 I headed down to Las Gallinas again in search of recently reported but stubbornly elusive birds such as Burrowing Owl and Prairie Falcon. I struck out on them. But I did see a mighty Ferruginous Hawk perched out on the irrigation structures in the fields north of the last pond. He then took off, giving me a good look at this larger and much less common relative to our ubiquitous red-tails.
199. Pelagic Cormorant: With time running out, I made one last trip south on my one day off between Christmas and New Year’s, biking down to the rocky shoreline of the Loch Lomond Marina in search of the reported Little Blue Heron (which I had seen previously further to the south on a car-powered journey), deep water birds like surf scoters, or nuthatches in the mature ornamental conifers in the neighborhoods around Dominican University. While fruitless in most of these respects, I did pick up one coastal bird that is very difficult to locate in Novato: two Pelagic Cormorants, smaller and blacker cousins to our common inland species, the Double-Crested Cormorant.

     

The Big Recap

So that’s it! 199 species. Failure in one respect (I did not achieve the nice round number of 200), but success in many others. Some highlights and lessons learned:

• I saw a lot of birds! Some relatively, locally, or absolutely uncommon species that I saw in 2018 included Tundra Swan, Blue-winged Teal, Eurasian Wigeon (several), Least Bittern, Swainson’s Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Rock Wren, Palm Warbler, Wood Duck, and perhaps best of all Red-naped Sapsucker. I found this last bird back in January 2018 all by myself, in my favorite Novato preserve over at the forested riches of Indian Tree.

  

• I know my home territory better: Then there were some birds that were not uncommon individuals, but rather regularly occurring species that I was insufficiently aware of. I didn’t know there were resident rufous-crowned sparrows lurking in the chaparral of Big Rock Ridge an hour’s walk from home. Or that Stafford Lake hosts several spotted sandpipers every winter and singing Swainson’s thrushes above the lake in spring. Or that western wood-pewee and chipping sparrow are spring regulars on Mount Burdell. And I finally paid a bit more attention to gulls, giving more careful study to winter species like Mew, Herring, and Glaucous-winged Gulls.

• 

  I discovered new – but nearby – places: In 2018 I visited some places I didn’t even know existed, like the Day Island Wildlife Area and those Hooded Merganser-loaded golf course ponds in Black Point. I explored some under-explored areas like the steeper slopes of Big Rock Ridge. And I became more familiar and appreciative of the rocky shoreline of San Rafael, our nearest source for birds like turnstones and oystercatchers, pelicans and pelagic cormorants.
• I understand our seasons better: Another thing that this “find them this year” exercise develops is your awareness of the calendar. In spring, a number of migrant songbirds pass through our woods—and you’ve got to be out there when they come through! Western Tanager, Black-headed Grosbeak, Cassin’s Vireo, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Black-throated Gray Warbler, and Hermit Warbler are all much easier to find as spring migrants rather than real breeders in my local radius. In fall, we get a different run of migrants: now I am more aware of the window for Yellow Warblers and Willow Flycatchers as well as Vaux’s Swifts and phalaropes. And I will not make the mistake again of assuming I will inevitably and naturally find Short-billed Dowitchers and Rufous Hummingbird—they have a peak migratory window and I need to look for them at the prime time to be sure of them (those were perhaps my two biggest misses of the year—others included Bald Eagle, American Bittern, Pygmy and Red-breasted Nuthatch).

  

• I didn’t get hung up on arbitrary numerical targets: For a while as the year drew to a close, I felt some dissatisfaction at falling short of my original goal of 200 species. But with everything now completed, I feel no regrets. After all, one does not embark on a Thoreauvian Big Year with the overriding priority of maximizing the species count – one embarks on a Thoreauvian Big Year with the goal of reducing one’s species count from what it would be with no limits on travel modes and distances. I aimed to better learn my local birds, explore my town’s natural surroundings, become more in touch with the year’s calendar, and to spend more time birding and less sitting in cars. On all of these measures, 2018 was a clear success.

Next Challenge

So what’s in store for 2019? Another attempt at 200 birds, armed with greater wisdom and experience? A relaxing break from counting? My current plan is more the former than the latter, but with a new twist that will further restrict and moderate the labors: a new, smaller five-mile radius. This is the current cool thing in the bird blogging world – see I Used to Hate Birds for more info on the 5MR rationale, the 5MR fun, a circle-on-a-map drawing tool, and to join the challenge yourself.

For me, a narrower radius will mean that I’ll skip the longer bike rides to seek those San Rafael shoreline birds, while passing on the official Thoreauvian policy of no cars will mean that I won’t have to make technicality-mandated repeat trips to see birds that I happened to see first in a car (I will still do the great bulk of my birding by foot and bike, since I sold my car last spring when I was having so much fun doing my Thoreauvian bike-birding). Armed with 2018 experience, I’m still shooting for 200 species, since only four of my 199 for last year were actually found exclusively beyond the five-mile border.

More details, techniques, updates, and encouragement to undertake your own 2019 5MR challenge coming soon!

The Thoreauvian Big Year

1. Introduction: How many birds can I find in a year within 10 miles of my Novato home, without using a car? I kick off the Thoreauvian Big Year.
2. Late January Update: The easy resident and wintering birds pour in – along with a few surprises – among the highlights of the first 115 species. What local sites should you visit in January if you want to see more birds?
3. March Update: I climb to 142 species, wrapping up most of the common winter birds and seeing the first signs of spring as we pass through February.
4. April Update: Spring ramps up and I work harder to find some special birds.
5. July Update: Spring winds down with some of our most spectacular migrants.
6. October Update: Fall migration passes south and I begin to think creatively about how to reach 200 species.
7. Conclusion: Did I make it? What were the highlights? What did I learn? Why would someone undertake a Thoreauvian Big Year again?

Header image: Ferruginous Hawk by Don Bartling