It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a birdathon.
Also called a Big Day, a birdathon is an attempt to find as many species as possible in 24 hours. On May 24, my birdathon team, “The Cardinal Sins,” convened at 2 a.m. and began listening for owls. For the next 20 hours, I would seek birds from Bangor to the coast, accompanied by my wife, Sandi, and local veterinarian Julie Keene. We were handicapped by the absence of our fourth teammate, Linda Powell.
Our team’s best day ever was in 2003. We managed to locate 132 species in one day. Over the past 15 years, we’ve never beaten that number.
It was a day full of highs and lows. We found many difficult species, but missed a bunch of easy ones. For instance, the Bangor Mall is full of mockingbirds…except that day. We missed ring-billed gull — you know, the gull that hangs out around parking lots. We missed broad-winged hawk, the most common hawk in Maine.
We got off to a flying start. At our second pre-dawn stop, we rejoiced to hear two barred owls calling, our first species of the day. As we listened, we were startled to hear the bark of a saw-whet owl right behind us. We had scored two of our toughest birds right away. Shortly thereafter, an ovenbird, whip-poor-will and common nighthawk joined the list. By 3 a.m., we had our first five species. We added six more over the next hour — all unseen, but positively identified by ear. At one point, the whip-poor-wills and American woodcocks were calling so loudly that it was tough to hear anything else.
Dawn brought a cacophony of singing birds. We stopped straining to hear a single bird, and started straining to pick out new voices over the din. Swainson’s thrush. Alder flycatcher. Lincoln’s sparrow. Palm warbler. By 5 a.m., the sun was over the horizon and our list contained 30 birds. If this pace kept up, we might break our record!
It got better. Through sheer luck, we had picked a day when northern forest migrants were passing through. Tennessee warblers are usually hard to find. They nest mostly in northern Maine and Canada. But they were everywhere during our Big Day, pausing in migration. We snagged a passing blackpoll. We notched a Cape May warbler. We located a bay-breasted warbler in a place they had never been before. Except for mourning warbler, the team found every conceivable warbler in our area, a feat we had never before accomplished. In short, we cleaned up on warblers.
By 6 a.m., we had discovered 48 species. By 7 a.m., 68 birds were on the list. An important benchmark to gauge our progress is to identify 100 species by noon. It was close. We were at 95 by 11 a.m. and barely hit the goal by noon. We achieved that benchmark two years ago, but we were keenly aware of what happened next in that year. The wind came up, the birds shut up, and our afternoon got off to a flying stop. The rest of the day was slow and frustrating. Could we possibly surpass 132 this year?
Maine is rich in birds. Many birders south of us can claim a longer state list, but only because our birds pass through there on the way here. For breeding birds, it’s hard to beat Maine. Some of their nesting behaviors get pretty comical. As we passed the Veterans Remembrance Bridge into Brewer, we spied crows harassing a peregrine falcon, presumably because it was too close to their nest. But as the crows approached the bridge, the falcon turned the tables and attacked them, presumably because they were now too close to the peregrine’s nest.
We were about 15 minutes late getting to our favorite shorebird hotspot in Steuben, and the tide was already swallowing the mud. Yet our luck held. The far shore was lined with black-bellied plovers, ruddy turnstones, a greater yellowlegs and two beautiful breeding-plumage red knots. That pushed our total to 126 by 5 p.m., and we still hadn’t reached our final destination, Schoodic Point. Once there, we were astonished to find a raft of harlequin ducks, which should have migrated north by now. We added black and surf scoters, plus several other seabirds.
In the gathering gloom, we spotted two loons. The first was a common loon. Right next to it: a red-throated loon! Bird #132.
A tie.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. He developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. He can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.
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