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Backyard Big Year daily bird log. How do you keep track of your daily bird sightings or other birding activities?

Keeping track of your bird sightings is an important part of a Backyard Big Year–but it is important for all types of birding if you want to preserve a record of your efforts.  I keep a daily list, which I then enter into eBird with additional numbers and notes.  I don’t record as much info as I could in my daily notes, but try to enter my day’s sightings into eBird as soon as I can so that numbers and other notes about the sightings aren’t lost.

I start the day by creating a new page in the notebook.  I make 30 hashmarks at the top of the page, so that each new bird I see for the day has a place for me to write its 4 letter banding code.  I like doing this because it helps me easily see how many species I’ve seen so far that day.

I write additional notes about sightings, unusual numbers or anything else that I find interesting.  I also record in the bottom corner the timing of my daily recordings with my OldBird21c microphone–which lately I’ve been running pretty much day and night to capture the bird activity in the yard.  Who knows when I’ll have time to go through these recordings to look for additional species that may have slipped past while I was sleeping or not in the yard.

Often I will record the time of day I was outside in the yard, or how much of the time I was just listening to the microphone or watching from the windows.  That stuff gets recorded on my eBird checklists–so I don’t always write it down, but if I’m in and out a lot doing other things, I try to record it so that I don’t forget exactly when I was outside or paying attention to the microphone.  I also like to record what time I had interesting sightings, as well as how long it took me to find 20 or 30 species for the day.

At any rate, this is a system that works for me–mostly designed to help me keep track of my daily sightings–and Yard FOYs (circled) or other noteworthy sightings.  Many people are now going to entering their sightings directly into eBird via mobile phone apps.  I’m not there yet.  I like writing down the birds as I see them, though even that bit of effort can take away from my time peering through the scope for those quick flyby ducks I so need to find!

How do you keep track of your bird sightings?

Sparrow slick excavated in snow for attracting ground feeding birds.

For a Big Year birder, it’s all about finding new birds for the year–first of year (FOY) birds.  For someone playing the Backyard Big Year game, the game is to find new birds in the yard for the year–Yard FOYs.

Now that ice is starting to melt in the county, birds are on the move and this morning was great with 5 FOYs in my yard–

Green-winged Teal–pair of birds quickly flying to north through trees.  These are also NYBs (new yard birds).  In a yard far from water, and after having over a dozen unidentified ducks flyby yesterday evening with looks that precluded good IDs, glad to get these even as a quick look.

Rusty Blackbird–at least one flyover in combined grackle/blackbird flock, calling tchek call and slimmer shape and narrower pointed wings than Red-winged Blackbird.

Great Blue Heron–three, possibly four, birds seen flying over the yard when I walked my kids to catch their bus.

When you live by the flyover for your Yard FOYS, you have to take the photos you can get!

Fox Sparrow–one bird seen on edge of tangles in side yard, then briefly under feeders, and later at my sparrow slick.

Killdeer–first detected about 6am by my OldBird21c microphone, but then heard distantly about 10:30am.

One thing I like about the term Yard FOY is that it rhymes with joy.  Finding new birds in the yard, either as an all time NYB or as a Yard FOY can bring a lot of joy!

At 11:34 last night I heard, and the Oldbird21c mic recorded, this wing whistle going over my yard.  Sounds like the duck was pretty close.

Finally the temps are getting above freezing, the snow is melting, and the birds are moving!

Geese and grackles and blackbirds are the big movers right now, and it is finally fun to get some birds moving around the neighborhood again.  Today I had 29 species by 11:43am, so I knew I was going to get to 30–first time since January 15.  Ended the day with 33 species.  Highlights were the return of the American Tree Sparrow, and flocks of Snow Geese.  A very distant flyby male Common Merganser gave hope that I’ll soon see other waterfowl from the yard as well.

American Tree Sparrow on the patio

American Tree Sparrow working the edge of my sparrow slick

Pine Siskin on nyjer feeder

Male Hairy Woodpecker hanging on the suet feeder

It isn’t unusual for me to hear Blue Jays imitating Red-shouldered Hawks, but this morning about 11am I had one do it fairly close to my microphone so I was able to get this recording:

Interestingly, the bird was in a tree near my sparrow slick, and after it quit calling it dropped down to feed on the seed.  I don’t know if this was an attempt to scare other birds away from the food source–I didn’t really see any other birds besides juncos and White-throated Sparrows on the sparrow slick at the time so not sure there was anything there to really scare.  At any rate, an interesting recording.

As I’ve been watching my backyard so intensely the last two months, one of my favorite occurrences is when a Cooper’s Hawk blows through my yard scattering the birds.  If I’m inside and listening to my OldBird21c microphone while doing other work, I’ll often drop everything when I hear the birds scatter–and if I’m quick enough, I’ll see the culprit winging through the trees or perched after a failed blitz.

Here’s the audio of birds scattering as an immature Cooper’s Hawk buzzed the yard this morning just before noon.

Starling alarms followed by Mourning Dove eruption

Notice the first birds to sound an alarm are the European Starlings, then other birds chip in and the Mourning Doves explode (probably the intended prey) explode into flight.  Followed by silence as birds hunker down until the bird moves on.

I love it when this happens.  The other day, I heard this and said Cooper’s Hawk as I ran to the patio door, just in time to point out the flyby accipiter to my son.  It was almost magic.  OK, not magic.  But close!

No-Show Woodpecker

If you can do a big year in your backyard, why not that other classic birding game–the big day?

Noticing that my highest bird count for the yard this month was 26 species, and that Feb 25th was going to be the warmest day of the week, I decided to try and break my record by spending as much time birding in the yard as possible that day–a backyard big day!

I got a slow start, as birds were slow to appear in the morning and with chores I wasn’t able to spend much time outside the first couple hours of the day.  But when I walked the kids to the bus, Pine Siskins appeared in the trees and I got photos to add them to the photo big year total.  Over the next half hour I added Pileated Woodpecker, Turkey Vulture, White-breasted Nuthatch, and Ring-billed Gull.  By 11:40am I was at 23 species.  A new record looked very doable, with 13 species seen in February not yet having appeared for the day.

While the temperature inched up from a start of 15F to 31F, the birding remained cold and slow.  Painfully slow.  Over the next few hours I was only able to add a distant flyby American Robin and a brief glimpse of a Cooper’s Hawk blitzing the yard.  By 5pm I had to run some errands, the sun was setting, and I was sick of being outside in the cold.  So no new record.

The day did highlight how important those first few hours of the morning are to building a good species total.  Also how crazy the vagaries of birding can be–I missed Hairy Woodpecker, which has been seen in my yard every day this week.  Also no flyover gulls, so only managed distant Ring-billed and no Herring Gulls.  The Pine Siskins were the highlight of the morning, and that was 8:30am.  After that, it was pretty humdrum.  Even with many hours of extra effort, I wasn’t able to top my previous record.

Such is the life of a big day birder.  Big days don’t always go as planned.  The birds don’t always cooperate.  Even in your own backyard!

eBird checklist

It’s been super cold here in New Jersey the past few weeks.  Yesterday started out at -5°F, our coldest morning so far.  Today was barely better at 2°F.  All the water in the county is pretty much frozen, except for open spots on the Delaware River.  Most of the geese and other waterfowl have headed to the river, a few gulls are still moving back and forth but otherwise bird movements seem about as frozen as the weather.

Sparrow Slick–area I keep dug out so I can add seed for the ground-feeding birds.

After picking up the miracle Brown Creeper, there haven’t been any new birds recently, but I’m managing to get my 20 Bird Minimum Daily Requirement each day–though it’s getting harder and usually taking some time in the afternoons as well as mornings to pull it off.

Hairy Woodpecker in the snow

Tonight we’re bracing for another 4-8 inches of forecast snow, plus freezing rain.  I’ve only just recently been able to get up and down my snowy driveway.  Hopefully this new snow will drive something else my way–still waiting for redpolls that have been reported sparsely elsewhere across the state.

We are experiencing an invasion of Rough-legged Hawks in the county, so I thought I’d go out this afternoon and scan the narrow window I have on the valley to the north and see if I could spot one.

As I was standing at the scope, looking towards the distant valley, I saw my suet feeder and wondered when am I ever going to get a Brown Creeper in my yard?  I’ve never seen one here, even though they are uncommon but regular winter residents in the county.  A friend of mine has them come to his suet feeder.  Not a minute later I brought up my binoculars to look at a chickadee in my oak tree and a bird flew out of the tree.  I followed it at eye level as it flew across my yard, and low and behold it was a Brown Creeper!

Scene of the synchronicity. My view of the valley to the north is over the roof of my neighbor’s house. The creeper flew out from the oak and cedar tree area just to the right of the house.

Unfortunately it disappeared in my side yard, so I couldn’t get a photo.  But I was floored!  How often do we think about a bird only to see it a moment later out of the blue?  How does that work?  Did I unconsciously hear the bird and have that trigger thoughts about it?  I wish I knew how this works, but it isn’t the first time it has happened to me.  Most birders probably have had experiences like this as well.  It’s crazy.  But crazy cool.

Bring on the birding synchronicities!

Derek Lovitch wrote How to Be a Better Birder in 2012 to help birders to identify and find more birds.  It’s a great book with plenty of good advice and good birding stories.  Check out my review here on the Birdchaser blog, or pick up a copy yourself on Amazon.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the better birding principles in How to Be a Better Birder can help anyone become a better backyard birder.

Here are some of the topics covered in How to Be a Better Birder with some notes on how they can apply to a backyard big year, or help anyone find and identify more birds in their yard:

Advanced Field Identification–Lovitch discusses the Cape May “whole bird” school of bird identification, or going beyond mere field marks to learn to recognize the bird by overall clues including size, shape, actions, and habitat.  Backyard birders should spend as much time really looking at the birds in their  yard, so that they can identify them without binoculars in most circumstances, including great distances.  The better you know the local birds, the better chance you will have of spotting something out of the ordinary.  He also suggests taking good notes–which is vital for a yard lister.  I keep a daily list right now during my Backyard Big Year, including notes on what birds are doing including the first time I hear them singing, etc.  The final section of this chapter is dedicated to creating a birding library–every birder should have one.  I will be suggesting many good books for backyard birders (this is the first!) as the year unfolds, but the books suggested by Lovitch are good ones to start with.

Birding by Habitat–you might not think this matter so much to a backyard birder, but actually habitat is key.  You can improve your habitat in the yard, or just better understand the vegetation in your yard to better predict and find birds as they migrate through your yard.  Personally, I’m pretty bad at my eastern U.S. trees, having grown up in Oregon, so I’m still working on this part of better understanding the plants and habitats on my 2.7 acre yard.

Birding with Geography–you can use geography to help you predict bird movements and occurrence.  While Lovitch uses this to help find birding locations, you can use these same principles in your yard to better understand how birds are moving through your neighborhood.  As I’ve been spending more time in my yard, I’ve been noting how hawks, gulls, and geese are moving across the valley and ridges visible from my yard, and it is helping me find more birds as I scan those important geographic features from my yard.  I’ve already blogged about some of how the local geography influences my yard birding at the yard, neighborhood, and wider geographic scales.

Birding and Weather–Lovitch mostly discusses how changes in weather can impact how and when birds move, and when they are forced down in bad weather.  This also works in your yard, and backyard birders should learn how their local birds respond to weather events–such as the snows and harsh temperatures I’m experiencing right now in New Jersey, as well as the middle of the night rain storms that will drop migrant songbirds down into my neighborhood during migration.

Birding at Night–here’s one of the biggest frontiers for backyard birders.  I’ve got my OldBird 21c microphone running most nights to try and detect owls as well as birds migrating high overhead in the darkness.  There’s not much moving now in midwinter, but I am picking up occasional owls and duck wing whistles.  I’ll have a lot more to say on this topic this year as I start doing a better job of reviewing my night recordings and posting results here on my blog.  Backyard birders who really want to blow their minds with amazing bird observations should get a microphone set up in their yard–they will be able to hear things that they would never be able to find in their yard any other way–such as migrating shorebirds, rails, thrushes, and cuckoos.

Birding with a Purpose–Lovitch suggests participating in citizen science programs to record bird distribution and abundance.  Backyard birders can participate by counting their yard birds for the Christmas Bird Count, Great Backyard Bird Count, or even just daily for eBird.  I’m recording all my bird sightings for eBird–and last year I had church responsibilities that kept me from going out on my local Christmas Bird Count, but by watching my feeders for a little while, I was able to add a species to the count that nobody else had picked up.  There are other backyard citizen science programs that are fun and useful for backyard birders, and I will be highlighting them here in the future.  Meanwhile, everyone can add their daily bird sightings to eBird!

Birding in the backyard is not just an activity for casual birdwatchers, or those without transportation or funds for wider birding adventures.  There are real frontiers of bird knowledge to be gained by paying more attention to the birds in your yard, and How to Be a Better Birder is one good introduction to some of these opportunities, if you will read it with that in mind.  My Backyard Big Year blog can be another source of information and inspiration as we explore all these better birding principles in more detail throughout the year in our quest to bring cutting edge birding to the backyard!

Disclosure: my review of How to Be a Better Birder is based on a review copy provided by the publisher.