Bird-a-thon 2006 (5/12-5/13)

This past weekend was the annual Bird-a-thon fundraiser for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. For those unfamiliar with the event, the idea is to get groups of birders together and spend a 24-hour period trying to locate as many bird species as possible (think of it as a naturalist's scavenger hunt). Each team represents a different sanctuary and after the results are totaled a winner is crowned.

Well, that's the background. I've done this event 4 or 5 times and its always fun. But you're really at the mercy of the spring New England weather. One of the past years was cold and rainy (some groups even had snow) while others have been unmercifully hot.

This year it was torrential rain. Its been raining here in southern New England for an entire week. Its been pretty hard on the area. There's been a lot of flooding and property damage especially up north. So, in the grand scheme of things, our Bird-a-thon problems are pretty small.

But, it certainly didn't help the situation. My sub-team (my parents and I) had the territory of Wachusett Reservoir and Delaney WMA in Bolton/Stow. On Friday night, we started at Wachusett. It was raining pretty good when we got there at 6:00 PM but we were able to immediately check off Mallard, Common Loon, and Hooded Mergazer. We also found a pair of Greater Yellowlegs. We stopped at a few more spots along the reservoir and as the weather cleared a bit we found some other common birds (Rose Breasted Grosbeak, Mourning Dove) but everything was hunkered down for the night. We tried to listen for some owls but finally gave up.

The next morning we got up bright and early and made our way out to Delaney. It was already raining again before we even got there. The rain came in waves the entire day. At times it would be coming down hard for a few minutes. Then it would stop and just mist for a while.

These conditions made the birds were extremely hard to find. They weren't singing and when we did happen across an adventurous one, the fog made identification difficult. We did have a few nice sighting though. My favorites were a single Scarlet Tananger, and a couple of Brown Creepers trying to find something to eat. I also had a really fantastic sighting in the afternoon that was a "life" bird for me. Unfortunately I don't think that I should go into any more detail since the species is locally rare in Massachusetts and I'd hate to have a mass of birders descend on the area and scare it away from this potential nesting site (like anyone reads my ramblings). Maybe in a couple of months I'll write it up.

Finally we took a drive to Sterling Peat and found a few more shorebirds and some swallows. We stayed around long enough to finally hear an Eastern Phoebe. Unbelievably this is the first one we heard all day... but I'm glad we got one.

So, after spending the day searching as hard as we could, we headed home. But, we couldn't help but take a slight detour to pick up one more species. We intentionally drove the long way since it would bring us under two bridges. But, we got our target: a Rock Pigeon!

Our final species total was modest (64 species) but overall the Broad Meadow Brook team did well. We got 158 species in total. But the most important thing is that we raised a lot of money for the sanctuary.

My teams birds: Common Loon, Double-crested Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, Green Heron, Canada Goose, Mute Swan, Wood Duck, Mallard, Hooded Merganser, Virginia Rail, Killdeer, Greater Yellowlegs, Least Sandpiper, Greater Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Common Tern, Mourning Dove, Eastern Screech Owl, Belted Kingfisher, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Eastern Phoebe, Warbling Vireo, Blue Jay, American Crow, Tree Swallow, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Barn Swallow, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, House Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Hermit Thrush, Wood Thrush, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Northern Mockingbird, European, Starling, Yellow Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Pine Warbler, Ovenbird, Common Yellowthroat, Scarlet Tanager, Chipping Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Brown-headed Cowbird, Baltimore Oriole, House Finch, American Goldfinch, Rock Pigeon, Northern Parula, White-throated Sparrow, House Sparrow