Birding as a Competition

On Saturday, May 10, hundreds if not thousands of New Jersey residents will rise and seek out as many birds as they can find. But this will not be the usual weekend during peak northbound migration when the warblers, vireos, tanagers, flycatchers and many, many others are passing through on their way to breeding territories.

(Margo D. Beller)

This day will be the World Series of Birding, started in Cape May, N.J., in 1984 by Pete Dunne and others as a charitable competition with the aim of finding as many birds as possible in a day and collecting money based on how much is pledged per bird. The winnings go towards bird habitat conservation.

There will be teams starting off at midnight and traveling from High Point at New Jersey's northwestern tip to Cape May in the south. There will be people sitting in one place and tallying what they see and hear. There will be yet others who travel to bird specific areas, such as my home county where Great Swamp, Troy Meadows and Jockey Hollow are located. They'll compete, raise money, then report their findings on eBird in the name of "citizen science."

No thanks.

Charitable as I try to be, I tend to avoid official competitions like this. Too many people zooming around, ticking off birds on a list and trying to find more birds than anyone else. It reminds me very much of the narrative of "The Big Year," a nonfiction book (later made into a movie) describing how three guys competed to get into the record books for seeing the most North American birds in a year. 

This is not birding, this is listing.

I admit to some competitive spirit. If I look at the eBird reports for my county and see things listed in places near me, I'll go out and try to find them - strictly for my satisfaction and not to report to eBird because I don't like counting how many birds I'm seeing. Like ticking off a list without looking at the birds for more than a second and a half, counting how many robins or whatever I'm finding detracts from my enjoyment of being outside with my binoculars.

I also admit to using the Merlin app, when I can get it working, to help me hear and/or identify some of the sounds I hear if they are not familiar to me. I have to take Merlin with more than a grain of salt because it is not always correct in its "suggestions."

World Series of Birding "Big Stay" team at Scherman
Hoffman, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I am a Luddite compared to others. Ever since Covid got people outside and noticing the singing birds, birding has become more popular. I am seeing more people when I go out. I am reading more posts on eBird. I wonder how they are finding the birds.

They have help.

We are far beyond the time when all you needed were binoculars and a pair of eyes (and maybe a spotting scope). Besides apps like Merlin there are social media feeds where someone finding a rarity can send out an alert and 100s of people will be at the spot in a matter of minutes. Gadget technology is big, too. Hang a bird feeder with a camera on it that connects to your phone and you can get information on what you are seeing with the push of a button. Field guides? That's so last century!

Every birding organization from magazines such as Birds and Blooms to the National Audubon Society will be more than happy to show you the latest gear including camera attachments, gloves that will allow you to use your phone's touchscreen without removing them and the most effective mosquito repellent.

To me this is a bit much. As I've written before, there are limits to technology.

In years past, when I've seen Pete Dunne in the field, he has his binoculars and his decades of experience to guide him. Too many newbies think they have to become instant experts. When I see them in the field, more often than not they are holding cameras with long lenses rather than binoculars. They are going off the path, bushwhacking, destroying habitat and risking tick bites. 

Pete Dunne at Scherman Hoffman, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

I can be obsessed about birding at this time of year now that I have the time to rise most weekday mornings and travel to where I (and Merlin) can hear the birds that will soon either be gone or sitting quietly on nests. Seeing what Merlin heard and I didn't can be humbling. It makes me want to listen to the calls more often so I can learn them. In that, I am competing with myself.

So have fun with the World Series of Birding, fellow birders. Raise untold thousands of dollars. Find rarities that may be passing through the state on May 10.

I wish you all luck. But this birder will be back in the field on May 11.

My State of Birding

The other day I was looking at the New Jersey bird list and found a reference to a "Morris Plains Pacific loon." Morris Plains is a small borough in northern New Jersey.

I didn't know which was more startling, a Pacific loon from the west found in New Jersey or a Pacific loon found at all in MY TOWN.




My photo of the Pacific loon, Morris Plains, NJ

 The loon, a juvenile, had been in the area for five days by then - as of today it is still being seen (and a second one was found even more recently at Lake Parsippany a few miles away!).

I was angry as hell that I'd missed it all that time but quickly caught up the next day by getting MH away from his books and papers and grabbing our binoculars and cameras to rush to the pond where it had been found, in an otherwise ugly office park at the edge of our town, literally five minutes away.

We saw the loon, we took our pictures (semi-decent because even with a long lens the bird was still too far for me) and even got to see that ringnecked ducks, redbreasted mergansers and hooded mergansers were in the pond, with a lovely redtailed hawk in the clear blue, chased by two less-than-happy American crows.

Another photo I took.

A good day, I thought. It's not often an unusual bird is found in my "backyard" and easy to see during a workday break. Oh, the joy of working from home.

Then, that evening, I was checking the list again and came upon a post that amazed me.

It was from a Bayonne (NJ) birder who posts regularly. Something set him off, however. A gyrfalcon had been found at Gilgo Beach off Fire Island in NY and, I'm gathering by his post, the bird chasers had gotten out of hand.

In "The state of birders/birding" he wrote:

It seems that the current atmosphere favors the "birder" and not the "birdwatcher." With RTD (real-time data), listers (chasers) seem more numerous than "birdwatchers." This concerns me because then it is sport (the extreme) and not science (the desire). Obviously, most fall somewhere in between.

Well, he's right about that. Many are the times I've complained about people who take the fun of birding much too seriously, traveling miles just for a glimpse, lugging gun-like lenses and trampling the environment in the process. In its extreme, it's the plot of the movie "The Big Year."

At the office park we met one woman who had driven two hours north from Gloucester County in south Jersey. (This wasn't odd to us as we've been known to drive two hours south for the same reason. But we always combine that with other things, such as visiting a bookstore.) Another woman there said that on a whim she decided to throw her dog in the car and drive over -- from Delaware.

Talk about a loon!

So yes, there are nutcases out there who time their movements to those of the birds.

But here is where Mr. Bayonne got me mad.

This all goes back to grade school. As far as I can tell, most lurk and wait for the "real birders" to "find" and report birds that they then "chase." Boil it down and these are the people that copied homework back in the day.

Now wait a minute, buster. I don't LURK.

Those "real birders" must not need money because they are reporting odd birds in far-flung areas every day. MH and I can only do any real birding on the weekends because during the week we have a little thing called WORK to do.

That's why I go to the list, to see what's out there so during my precious free weekend time I am not going off half-cocked. It gives me an idea, and then it's up to me to interest MH in joining me on the drive.

I don't cotton to being called a homework copier.

I don't put myself in the same league as those who read the list, learn of a gyrfalcon 500 miles away and then go nuts trying to get to it, find it and take a picture of it for his or her Flickr page. As MH likes to say, it's supposed to be a hobby.

Most times, whether I go with MH or alone, I don't find anything worthy of such frenzy, even if I wanted to report it. (I read the list but I am not a subscriber; only subscribers can report.) Most times I go out and find birds and am happy to see them, especially familiar ones I haven't seen for a while, such as the brown creeper or the bluebird. If someone else reports to the list about a flock of redhead ducks on nearby Lake Parsippany, as one did the other week, I plan my time and energy accordingly.

During weekdays I must content myself with the wonders of my own backyard.

Redtail picture by RE Berg-Andersson

For instance, the redtailed hawk above decided to just hang out for a while one day, and then it came for short periods during the next two days. Redtails are buteos. They like to eat squirrels, among other small mammals, so the ones in my yard disappeared as soon as this hawk flew in. The feeder birds knew they'd be left alone because it wasn't hunting, just sitting. However, the 200 grackles that were about to divebomb the feeders quickly took off from the surrounding trees.

...time to get out and find your own birds...might be the most fun you ever had;) he concluded.

Oh, I will, boy-o, I will indeed, as I do almost every weekend.

And when I do find an unusual bird - like the greater shearwater along a New Jersey beach or the sedge wren found in the wet grass of Somerset County's Lord Sterling Park, both seen a few years ago - I ain't gonna be reporting that news to anyone for the very reason that pissed you off about the gyrfalcon: the resulting overkill by zealous birders.

On that, Mr. Bayonne and I agree.

Otherwise, to Hell with him.

Life and life lists

There are times I want to drop everything - job, home, even husband - and go off somewhere to do nothing but look for birds. Then reality hits and I face whatever the problem is and go on with my life.

A lot of birders, however, seem to have the financial wherewithal or the time or the pliable boss to be able to just drop everything and go wherever a rare or unusual bird is reported.

Some travel very great distances indeed. Some of them even become the subject of books.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a lot of comment on various birding lists about a trailer for the movie “The Big Year.” It is based on the book by Mark Obmascik about three men of very different means who for very different reasons decide they want to see the most birds in a year.

The concept of the “big year” was popularized by, among others, Roger Tory Peterson, author of the famous Peterson guides that allowed anyone to be able to identify a bird through field markings (and binoculars) rather than shooting them down.

A lot of people like doing “big years” or “big days” or even “big sits” (you sit in one place for 24 hours and record what you see within a set radius). Many do it for charity, raising money for each bird they see. The World Series of Birding is one of the best-known examples, at least in New Jersey where I live.

I admit I’ve been known to take the car (with or without husband) every so often and drive to an area in the hopes of seeing something new.

But there are those who MUST see every bird on earth. In fact, there is a book, “To See Every Bird On Earth,” on that subject by Dan Koeppel. It was published in 2006, two years after “The Big Year.“ The two have a lot in common - each features a man so obsessed that birding becomes his life to the exclusion of everything else. In the Koeppel book, the author joins his father - the obsessed - on some of his travels as a way of trying to get close to him after years of estrangement. He is sympathetic to his father, even if he doesn’t exactly understand his obsession.

In the Obmascik book, there is one character so obsessed and so nasty about it you really, really hope he fails. In the movie, I discovered from the trailer, he will be played by Owen Wilson. I would’ve picked Dustin Hoffman, who reportedly was going to be in the film in a different role but left. He was replaced by Steve Martin, who will play the millionaire westerner who gets involved in the “Big Year” after he retires. (The third birder, a perpetual loser, will be played to type by Jack Black. There will be a lot of pratfalls in the film as a result.)

The obsessed character in “The Big Year” has the money and time to literally go great distances just for a few seconds to sight a bird. (It is a shock to realize you can no longer hop a plane, zip around and be back in a day in the world since Sept. 11, 2001.) His license plate reads “Skua,” apt because this is a nasty sea bird that lives by stealing fish from other birds.

These people in the book are real, I must emphasize. The character played by Owen Wilson was a featured speaker at the New Jersey Meadowlands Festival of Birding a few weekends ago, which shows he still knows how to make a buck.

He was described in the brochure I was sent as “bird chaser extraordinaire.” I call him a loser. I don’t plan on seeing the movie although I’ll be interested to read the thoughts of birders who do. (Birders will talk about anything on the bird lists until the list masters step in. The movie opens in mid-October.)

This man could’ve lost his life any number of times to break the “birds seen” record. His life must’ve meant very little to him compared to winning at any cost. This will be played to comedic effect in the movie, unfortunately.

But compare him to the person staring death in the face, such as one of my best friends. Her cancer has returned after 10 years of remission. It is the same type of cancer that killed my mother over 30 years ago. My friend has the advantage of better technology in fighting cancer, and the better attitude of “I went through it once, I can do it again” than my mother.

This is literally a matter of life and death and my friend values her life because she knows it's most important. The people who proudly boast how they travel halfway across the state - or the country, or the world - to record a bird on a "life list" doesn't know this and it shows the spirit of “The Big Year” is still very much with us.

These birders may have a big life list but, really, they have no life. I hope they get one before it’s too late.