Backyard Big Year

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.  

Every day I try to get 20 species in the yard for my 20 Bird Minimum Daily Requirement .  So far this year it usually takes about an hour in the morning to do this.  As it gets colder, and the local reservoirs freeze, the gulls and geese are not moving through  my neighborhood as much, and it is getting tougher to get those 20 birds.

Yesterday it was -4°F at 6:30am and I had to drive my daughter down to Baltimore for a clarinet audition at the Peabody Institute.  I only got 8 birds before I had to leave, and didn’t get back until a quarter to 5 and a Downy Woodpecker was the only other bird I was able to get for the day.  So yesterday was a pretty spectacular Birding Fail, and my first such day for my yard this year.

Some days are like that, and even a birding big year sometimes has to take a back seat to the family!

There isn’t anything more hard-core birding geeky than running numbers on potential bird sightings for a big year or big day, even if the projections are limited to your backyard!

I’m trying to gauge how I’m doing so far on my big year.  I’m a bit behind where I was hoping to be, as far as species totals go, but otherwise running numbers to see if I can make any projections based on my previous years birding in the county.

For the past three years, I’ve birded Hunterdon County pretty heavily but mostly birded my yard fairly casually.  Here’s how my birding has compared to the sum total of all eBirding in the county:

Here’s how my January birding in the county has compared to the rest of the year’s birding:

Usually, the top local county birders hit the month of January pretty hard, scour the county pretty good, and try to see all of the species seen in the county–including overwintering lingerers that are much more easily seen later in the year.  Hence the high percentage of all year birds seen in January.

If my 2015 Backyard Big Year birding were to follow that kind of trajectory, based on finding 47 birds in January, it looks like my total yard birds for the year would end up around 112 and 152, based on finding 31-42% of the ultimate total year birds in January.

There are reasons to believe that this trajectory won’t hold for the yard big year.  Instead of scouring a wide area, with yard birding I’m much more restricted to waiting for birds to come to me.  While there are daily and seasonal bird movements going on in January, there is a lot less movement than later in the spring or fall–so less chance of seeing many of the birds found in small numbers or scattered across the wider area.

Here’s how my casual yard birding has fared over the past few years:

Based on these totals, my 47 January birds may be only 26-30% of my total birds for the year, leading to a projected total for the year of  157 to 181 birds.

Are these realistic projections?  Time will tell.  Yard birding is in many ways different from county birding–it is much more challenging to find many species as flyovers or moving through a stationary point, than it is to go to where they are more easily found across a wider area.  In addition, I am recording nocturnal flight calls–which might actually increase my ability to find some species.  In 2012 I recorded Virginia Rail, Whimbrel, and Short-billed Dowitcher from my yard–birds which no other county birders were able to find on the ground during the year.  So hopefully nocturnal recording will boost my totals even higher.  How high?  How many birds will only show up as nocturnal migrants?  It will be exciting to find out!

Based on my projections, I should end up between 150 and 200 species for the year from my yard.  Anybody care to predict on a final total?  If yard birding were like other betting sports, how would we run betting on a backyard big year like this?

Only time, a lot of birding and recording review time, will tell what the final numbers will be.  In the meantime, there’s a whole year of geeky bird number crunching to keep me busy in the down times…oh wait, there really aren’t many down times when you’re at least always sitting by a window or listening to the OldBird 21c mic in the yard!

American Tree Sparrow  (Code 3)  27 Jan 2015

Area: Locally uncommon winter resident, most often in open or wooded brushy areas with other sparrow flocks.

Yard: Rare winter visitor, only one sighting prior to 2015.

Sightings: First bird of year was seen briefly under feeders after a heavy snow, but flew before I could get a photo.  On 9 Feb after another storm with freezing rain, a bird spent a few minutes under the feeders and I was able to get some photos (above).

The past few days have been pretty cold, with mostly the normal suspects.  This morning I finally got a Common Grackle for the year.  But the big news is that birds are really starting to sing, and I’ve added several more species to the audio recording big year.  Northern Cardinals are singing every morning, as are Tufted Titmouse, and this week the Song Sparrow and House Finches in my yard started to sing.  So even though it seems like the heart of winter (it was 3ºF this morning), the singing birds mean that spring is on its way!  Thank goodness!

American Robin in the snow

The past few days I’ve also had groups of American Robin moving through, after being scarce for the past month.  Another highlight this morning was a Great Black-backed Gull actually flying over my house with Ring-billed Gulls–and not just a couple miles away through the scope.  Too bad I wasn’t quick enough on the camera to get a shot–I’m going to need it for the photo big year!

eBird checklists:
4 Feb 2015
5 Feb 2015
6 Feb 2015 (AM)