I’m very excited about my 2015 Backyard Big Year. Here are my Top 10 Reasons why I’m doing a Backyard Big Year–and perhaps why you might want to do one too!
10) Save gas. I can easily drive 15,000 miles in a year just birding my own county. Gas prices at the end of December 2014 are dropping, but hey, I’ve got a daughter heading off to college this year and it might be a good idea to save some of that money! Oh yeah, and it’s probably better for the environment.
9) Spend time with family. Like I said, this year will see some changes at home with the oldest heading off to school. If I can spend more time sitting in my yard with my kids, maybe doing some gardening, or having friends over to hang out with, that sounds preferable to chasing around the county trying to see new birds for the year.
My local county eBird standings. New county birds are getting harder to come by.
8) I need new birds. I’ve birded Hunterdon County pretty heavily the past three years since we moved here. I’ve seen most of the regularly occurring birds. All the new birds for me to see in the county will be migrants–and I might have just as much of a chance to see them in my yard as I do driving all over the countryside. Especially if I go bionic!
7) Bionic birding. For a couple seasons I’ve deployed an OldBird 21c microphone (right) in my yard to monitor nocturnal songbird migration. It’s amazing what the mic can pic up flying over the house. This is a new frontier of birding, and I’ve already recorded Whimbrel and Short-billed Dowitcher from my yard–birds that are almost never seen in the county. So if I focus more energy on the birds flying over my house, I will probably actually add more species to my county list than I would spending more time at the reservoir.
Whimbrel flight call, recorded over my house 25 May 2012.
6) Sharpen my birding game. Focusing my energy on birding from my yard will make me step up my game. I’ll have to do better at identifying some of the more obscure bird vocalizations. Many of the birds I find will only be seen briefly and as flyovers. So I’ll have to be on top of my game. Think of it as hard core birding training. I’m very excited to work on my mad birding skills!
5) Research. There’s a lot we don’t know about bird movements and bird migration. When do ducks migrate? Do they vocalize? How about shorebirds? Rails? By conducting acoustic monitoring with the microphone, and conducting more regular point counts in my yard, I hope to make a real contribution to our understanding of bird movements.
4) Take my best shot. I grew up birding without a camera. Times have changed. Now everybody and their dog has a digital camera and is expected to document their sightings. I’ve got a Nikon COOLPIX P500 12.1 CMOS Digital Camera
3) Gear. I’m super interested in how technology can improve our ability to detect and identify birds. So I’ll be trying out some new gear. I’ve got a 15 foot tripod deer stand to set up so I can see over my trees. I’ve got bird ID books to help me get ready for those quick flyovers. Sound recording devices. Critter cams to try out. Sound like fun?
2) Fun. I love birding challenges, and this is just going to be plain old fun! I love strategizing, trying to figure out how to find more birds. By trying to find waterfowl away from water, or migrants away from their primary habitat, or as they fly over my house, it’s just going to be a whole lot of fun!
1) Sharing. I love to bird with others and to share what I find. I hope that this blog and the Backyard Big Year Facebook page will help me learn and also give me a chance to share what I learn with others. In the end, it’s only partially about how many birds I’m actually able to find. The journey, shared with my family and friends, is as much fun as anything. And this is a hard core birding quest I can undertake right here in my backyard.
So have I convinced you? Are you starting to think about how you can do your own backyard big year?
