The annual World Series of Birding is on Saturday, May 9, this year.
Ornithologist Ludlow Griscom and his protege, Roger Tory Peterson of the influential field guides, were among the first to popularize using binoculars rather than guns to study birds in the field. They were also among the first to popularize the concept of the Big Day.
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| (RE Berg-Andersson) |
The Big Day is a sort of endurance test - how many different types of birds can a person see in a day. It is a very American thing to do to prove to others (and yourself) just how good you are in finding and identifying birds. Some Big Days take place in popular places such as New York's Central Park and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Others can take place in your backyard.
Others take it to extremes, such as the three birders whose quest to see as many birds as possible in a year was made into a book and then a movie. Birding thus became another extreme sport instead of the walk in the park I enjoy. As I've said elsewhere, this isn't birding, it's listing. The bird's beauty is ignored, it is just a name ticked off on a chart.
Pete Dunne - not an ornithologist by his own admission - came up with the idea of marrying the Big Day with promoting citizen science. He called it the World Series of Birding, and it really took off when he got Roger Tory Peterson to come to Cape May, N.J., and ride with him and his team.
The birds recorded during the World Series are reported to the organizations that study birds, including Cornell's Ornithology Lab and Audubon. This way they know which birds are thriving and where, and which are in decline.
But then nature- or conservation-oriented organizations realized a way to, in effect, cash in on the World Series in the name of citizen science. They asked people to donate funds based on how many birds the organizations' teams found, either per bird or in total. The funds would go to support the organizations' work.
One example is the Land Conservancy of New Jersey, of which I am a member. I got the mailing below.
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| (Margo D. Beller) |
The concept has become so popular the Cornell people expanded it to the world - literally. There is now a Global Big Day on the same day as the World Series of Birding.
As usual, this birder flies solo. I don't count the number of particular birds I find and I like to walk alone quietly. I avoid birding on the Saturday of the World Series because I don't want to run into teams of people rushing through with their checklists in an area where I am trying to bird.
However, early May is the height of northbound migration, when the birds are heading to their breeding territories. Now that I am retired I have the time to go out on a weekday morning and avoid the weekend birders. Thus I have been undergoing my own endurance test for the past two weeks, rising early most weekdays to visit some of my favorite places within easy driving distance (mindful of the rush hour traffic I will hit on the way home).
One day is my own version of the "World Series of Birding" and it usually takes place in early May. That is when my husband (MH) drives us to the western edge of New Jersey, where the Delaware River flows, and we change places so I can slowly drive along Old Mine Road, an area of forest and high elevation. Many of the birds I want to see nest in this area and they all are singing as they proclaim their territories in preparation for mating and raising a brood.
This place draws a large number of birds that would otherwise not be found elsewhere in New Jersey, as well as a large number of birders.
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| A remnant of the former community on Old Mine Road (RE Berg-Andersson) |
There used to be homes along this road. But after too many floods the federal government decided there should be a dam across what is now Tocks Island. There was controversy over the dam, but unlike the fight to preserve Great Swamp from becoming an airport this fight was not successful for most of the people. They had to move, leaving their homes to be flooded.
Except the project was shelved in 1975, deemed too expensive. You can still see many of the abandoned homes, windows broken, covered in graffiti, on the verge of falling down like the barn shown above. (That picture is from a few years ago; as of May 4, 2026, more of the barn has come down). The homes of those who continued fighting to stay were grandfathered into the national park.
In summer people flock to this area where once there was a community to swim in the river or picnic. MH and I come before it gets too hot, buggy and crowded. During Covid, when very few federal parks were open, Old Mine Road was very popular. Lots were completely packed. At one the cars nearly spilled out into the road.
That lot and several others are now blocked, no doubt because of erosion on the paths leading to the river that was caused by hundreds of pairs of feet.
Old Mine Road is where I do all the bad driving I accuse others of doing on the highways. Right hand on the wheel, left hand holding Merlin near the open window, stopping suddenly every time I hear something. MH knows I am going to do this and only grows testy when he wants me to pull over for the sandwiches I packed for lunch.
Eventually, my stamina falters and I drive a little faster to get to the end. My head says to stop at every dirt path to hear what birds are around, but my body (and MH) tells me it is getting late. Five hours on one stretch of road goes by amazingly fast.
Near the end of the road we stop and MH takes over the driving.
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| Intrepid birder (me) on Old Mine Road a few years ago (RE Berg-Andersson) |
I enjoy all the birds I have found during these past two weeks, particularly the mornings after "big flight" nights when southwest winds and lack of rain brought thousands of birds northward. But finding the colorful challenges known as warblers is the main reason I go out in the early dawn hours in May.
This year at Old Mine Road the big search was for a Swainson's warbler - a bird of the south that prefers to stay low in brush where no one can see it. (I saw one - blink and you'll miss it - when we were in Florida in 2010.) We stopped at the stakeout but, as I expected, we allegedly "just missed it" because it was now deep in the brush off the road. But I heard something I had come to hear - the Cerulean warbler. As the name implies it is sky blue. It is also a bird, like too many others, whose population has declined due to habitat loss.
Usually we are lucky if we can hear the buzzy trill of one Cerulean. This year we heard six. That made our trip a very Big Day for me.
