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 "Witchities" World Series of Birding Blog |
Big Day minus oneby Ian Lynch It is 1:45 PM on Friday, I’m sitting in the passenger seat listening to a Grateful Dead concert from the year before I graduated from High School and trying to concentrate on blogging instead of birding! No, I haven’t given up the fight, Ken and I are headed north to Carl’s house to eat, sleep and start the Big Day. We’ll have lots of discussion between now and whatever time we steal a nap, then we will have even more when we finally gather the team to start birding at midnight. The night hours do hold a decent number of species, but it is much slower than most of the rest of the day, so we will have time to discuss strategy and routing choices. We have divided up the scouting into discreet sections so for the most part the important decisions in any area are made by the team member who scouted the area. For me that means rolling around a half dozen possibilities in my head including a number of “emergency exits” if time and/or species demand evasive action. The southernmost scouts on all the teams share the same plight, we have no control over how much time we will be dealt, we simply have to play the cards we are given. I’m actually starting to relish the role, it requires a cool head to face the challenge and fanatical drive to overcome. Last year I said, “Just get me to This year’s hotspot is definitely Heislerville. Lots of teams will find themselves spending an hour there picking up most of the shorebirds and good number of ducks. That is, of course, as long as the refilling of the impoundment at Matt’s Landing doesn’t completely obliterate the shorebird habitat. I’m planning a coastal-north-to-south-first route for The final (and perhaps best) find of the day was something we are hoping will be good for our “mojo.” The Wetlands Institute gift shop sells stuffed animal birds that sing their song when you squeeze them. So now riding proudly on the dash of the van is a stuffed Common Yellowthroat that sings “witchity, witchity, witchity” when squeezed! 10:01 PM - Friday, May 12, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentWSB scoutingby Ian Lynch As usual, we have had a good number of valuable encounters with other scouting teams. The exchange of information and helpful hints has been steady. We even had the pleasure of enjoying the hospitality of WSB staff Sheila Lego and Marleen Murgitroyde on Tuesday night at a dinner they hosted for WSB participants. The unscheduled entertainment for the evening was a pair of teammates from one of the top teams who put me in mind of Penn and Teller: one regaled us with fantastic stories while the other performed magic (in this case near perfect imitations of bird songs, including Winter Wren). Thankfully there was still food left when Ken and I arrived, since we were late. It would be nice if the cause were a matter of not being able to leave the field because of all the birds we were finding, but the truth is that we couldn’t leave the field because our technology drained the van battery and we couldn’t get it to start. Thankfully, Ken got enough signal on his cell phone to call AAA, but they couldn’t get there for almost two hours. A dozen or so people stopped to help, but none had cables. Eventually, one Good Samaritan went home and came back with cables and gave us a jump. We re-learned a lesson we had thought we already knew and now have cables in the van. One of the members of last year’s winning team, Bert of the Lagerhead Shrikes, has become something of a hero to Ken and me for his creative use of technology. One thing he has done is to take pictures of birds and their locations in the field so he can mark them up and show him to his teammates, thus helping the team to shave off valuable seconds during the competition. We so liked the idea that we’ve added his name as a verb to our birding lexicon. After locating the Yellow-crowned Night Herons at their usual roost in Avalon, I decided to snap a picture so that I could “bert” them. You can see the result posted here. We did the same with the Red-headed Woodpeckers. 10:52 PM - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentWSB Mondayby Ian Lynch The frustration of not being on territory looking at birds last week has now been replaced by total immersion scouting. I left When I got up in the morning (OK, so it was only a few hours later) the first bird sound I heard was a repeated buzzy call that immediately put me in mind of the eagerly anticipated woodpecker. Just as I was beginning to think that the week had started with a bang, I realized that I was listening to a Great Crested Flycatcher. As it turns out, while we are happily domesticated in our cozy cabin, we picked the wrong campgrounds this year as a very cooperative pair of Red-headed Woodpeckers is setting up house a few miles up the road at another campground. Scouting has been going rather well. Our driver, my brother Ken, joined me in the south on Monday afternoon. Carl spent the weekend camping up north, went to work for two days and is now again camped out in the northern woods. Dave has been making wild overnight forays (often starting at 2 AM) north from his home near 10:46 PM - Monday, May 8, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentHallucinations and Hopeby Ian Lynch
Thursday night I had a significant sign that I am ready for the WSB to begin...I had my first hallucination. Typically these don't occur until after dark on Big Day. At that point we are all exhausted and we have been forcing our brains to process every sound that enters our ears to see if it matches any conceivable bird sound catalogued in said over-taxed and mercilessly abused brain. That is when every whistle created by air rushing by the car and every cheep coming from the suspension translates into the most bizzare thoughts like potential Black-throated Blue Warblers and Tufted Titmice. But this hallucination was different, it was created out of hope. This happens all the time when anticipating a bird. They are very easy to dismiss with a quick reality check. In this case, I was standing on my back porch--a sort of very small deck--having just finished talking on the phone to fellow Witchity, Carl. I heard what I first thought was a Virginia Rail doing it's ki-dek, ki-dek call. Now, you need to know that there are woods behind my house. There is a large pond about a quarte-mile away, but it is not marshy at all. For a moment I thought about the wet areas in those woods before I came to my senses and accepted that I had been fooled by one Spring Peeper out of step with the rest of the chorus. But the very fact that I was desperately trying to find a bird in the dark while standing on what reminded me of a boardwalk let me know just how ready I am for the real thing! 11:51 PM - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentWhite-tailed Hawk Updateby Ian LynchCould this be one peripatetic bird? Yes, there was another sighting far away from the last one. So if this is a single bird its travel itinerary was Monday in Hadley, MA, Tuesday in the Great Swamp, NJ, and Thursday at the Pilgrim Heights Hawk Watch in Truro, MA! Maybe I should see the same travel agent for my trip to the World Series?!?! 7:02 AM - Friday, April 28, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentOf White-tailed Hawks and Temptationby Ian LynchAt choir rehearsal tonight, one of the basses asked me, "So, did you see the White-tailed Hawk?" To which I replied, "Of course!" What is remarkable about that exchange (beyond the fact that we were in Massachusetts, not southern Texas) is that he even asked me about it since I had mentioned the rarity in the area. I'll have to ask him the next time I see him how he even knew about it, since he is not a hard core birding nut case like me. Being bird-obsessed, it was no big surprise that I had chased this very surprisingly out of range bird that was less than an hour from my house. In fact, it is also of little surprise that I got the information via email on my cell phone about an hour before the owner of a local bird store called me with the same information. Heck, in this high-tech information driven world I guess we all will soon no longer be surprised by the easy access to information no matter how obscure.
I'm counting on this come World Series time. I always tell people that there is no excuse for not knowing where all the birds are in New Jersey come game day, the hard part is deciding how to connect all those dots...or more realistically, how many are feasible to attempt. When it comes time to make that decision, cold, hard calculating hearts and nerves of steel are demanded. Rare birds and oddities will always hold power in the mind and imagination of a birder, but on Big Day they all count the same. Not only that, but only the first one counts. So a dozen Roseate Spoonbills would be of no greater value than a single Carolina Chickadee (a bird we somehow missed in a blunder of gargantuan proportions last year). Two years ago we took the gamble of chasing the very sexy Purple Gallinule, but only because the Wetlands Institute held the promise of additional species and fit into our route. Still, the siren call of the rare bird is hard to ignore. So I guess I should be thankful that I saw the White-tailed Hawk in Hadley, MA on Saturday not only because it hasn't been reported since Monday, but also because there is now one (oh yeah, we all have guessed that it is the same one) being reported from--are you ready for this?--the Great Swamp in New Jersey, where we typcally begin at midnight! I wonder how a White-tailed Hawk looks in night vision binoculars? No, we'll be strong (or we'll tie each other to the mast) and we'll resist, after all some members of this team have already seen this bird! :-D 12:36 AM - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentCrew Member #6by Ian LynchAlthough we were never near panic, the truth is that the Witchities have been on a search for team members to reach the point of being official. OK, so that number is only three and Carl and I were on board all along, so it wasn't a difficult search.
But just like the World Series itself, it doesn't matter how hard it is to get the bird, just that you do. And so we got ourselves two birders to fill out our team. The first is Dave Evans. He was in the same boat we were, being down some members and looking to become "official." His team last year was the Mad Harriers, who finished with an impressive 181 species. We are grateful to have his energy, skill...and previously scouted birds! We are all bursting with pre-game confidence that this will be the year to break the 200 species barrier. Dave also brings to the team his nephew, Chris Vinosky. This continues our tradition of "keeping it in the family." I got involved through my friendship with Tom Young, brother-in-law to Carl and uncle to Cliff. Then when we added a driver, I dragged my brother on to the team. I guess it helps to be related to your teammates since you already know how to quarrel! Chris is a young musician and so will be filling the big shoes (literally) of Cliff this year. We have noticed that the musical talent seems to help provide "good ears" for the team. What Chris doesn't know is that he will be playing the part of "Crew Member #6" for us. You know the role I mean. Remember on Star Trek how some character who had never been on the show before would suddenly be named to the away team? The same thing always happened to Ensign Whatshisname...he didn't return. The rest of the team has been exchanging a mad flurry of pre-season emails about plans and already we have Chris slated to contend with bears in remote sections of northern New Jersey and angry farmers wary of trespassers. Welcome to the Witchities, Chris! Seriously, we look to have more scouting hours available to us this year along with the influx of knowledge that Dave brings. Every year builds on the previous ones and coming off our best year ever we are eager to push harder this year and see what results we can achieve. And it doesn't hurt that we have the ego and confidence boost of being Super Bowl Champions! 11:16 PM - Monday, March 27, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentSuper Bowl IIIby Ian Lynch
Front (L to R): Linda Pivacek, Tom Young, Geoff Wood, Ian Lynch Rear: Cliff Bernzweig (honest, that's his chin), Carl Bernzweig, Tom Clay So what does a Witchity do in the winter to stay wicked sharp for the World Series? Compete in the Super Bowl, of course! The Super Bowl of Birding is another competitive birding “big day,” only this one takes place the weekend before that other Super Bowl. The playing field is Essex County, Massachusetts and Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Not only is this more like a half-marathon (it runs from 5 AM to 5 PM) but there is the added twist of every species having a specific point value. Adding to the need for cunning strategizing is the fact that each top value species (5 points) has to be phoned in to the Joppa Flats Mass. Audubon Sanctuary with the first team to do so earning a 3-point bonus. It is a different game, one that was irresistible from the start for us Witchities, not to mention that there is a home field advantage for erstwhile Witchity (and original captain) Tom Young and myself, who both lived in Essex County for many years. So for each of the three years of the Super Bowl, Carl and Cliff Bernzweig have made the reverse trip that I make each May, coming to Massachusetts from New Jersey. And since we have three local non-Witchities on this team, we decided that the winter plumaged team required a different nom de guerre, so for the Super Bowl we are the Wicked Pishahs. Surprisingly, World Series wisdom has taken a while to get a grip on the Pishahs. During Super Bowl I, we actually stopped at a fast food restaurant for lunch! OK, well only two members went in for food, while a majority of the team remained in the parking lot (making any species countable by this game’s rules) to record the only Cedar Waxwings we saw that day. The Pishahs finished fourth in our first outing despite our lackadaisical approach. That all changed in Super Bowl II when sharp skills and a cunning plan netted a second place finish (and the Director’s Award) for the team. With the grand prize that close in our sites we pushed ourselves to accept nothing less this year. So with 86 species and 195 points (a Super Bowl record) the Wicked Pishahs were crowned champions of Super Bowl III and hoisted the Joppa Cup (well, we didn’t exactly “hoist” the award since it is topped by a Swarovski crystal sculpture of a Great Blue Heron that is perilously attached to the base). National Public Radio’s sports show, Only a Game, made the right choice of teams to shadow for the Super Bowl, “embedding” journalist Michelle Seaton with us. You can hear her report here The story begins at 38 minutes, 50 seconds. You can also read a stories about the event here and here. Don’t tell the competition, but we have big plans for Super Bowl IV. We believe that treating the Super Bowl with the same ruthless efficiency required in the World Series that we can top our totals from this year. In the mean time we’ll just have to see if we can follow one winning effort with another come May in New Jersey. 6:37 PM - Saturday, February 4, 2006 - comments {0} - post commentSparrow that Wasn'tLet me introduce myself--Carl Bernzweig--and add my two cents regarding honesty in the World Series of Birding.
Non-birders, even those intrigued by the idea of competitive birdwatching, have a lot of trouble getting past the idea of the contest results relying on teams' own reports. The analogy they're most likely to bring up is golf--which I imagine must be rife with cheating. The best we can do is tell these non-birders that we know we don't lie about our own sightings, that most of the competitors know one another, and if we thought others were just making things up, we all wouldn't spend so many hundreds of dollars and hours on the effort every spring. It just means too much to us.
On the other hand, birders understand that while a golfer knows whether he just spent four strokes or six, a competitor scoping a distant, backlit peep may not be so mathematically certain as to which one he's seeing. And any birder who's ever built a list, whether at leisure over the course of the year or racing the clock on a Big Day, also understands the compulsion to make the bird in view the one you most need. Wishful birding seems more of a threat to a fair WSB outcome than outright cheating does, and a couple mistakes probably get made by a team or two every year. The teams all understand this, and I believe most work hard to avoid crediting themselves with unearned species. It's heartbreaking to think of how many bird sounds we Witchities leave unidentified in the night.
Last year, 11th hour scouts reported a singing Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow, a difficult bird for WSB. Its location was relatively near the finish line, so most teams would have visited the spot late in the competition when, like us, they'd be over-tired, worrying over holes in their checklists, and very eager to believe any faint sound or little flash of brown was the bird in question. We spent ten precious minutes there but left empty-handed, convinced the thing would start singing its heart out as soon as we turned the key in the van.
I'm not sure how many teams actually went gunning for that same bird, but there were probably dozens. When the checklist of species seen by all teams combined was handed out at the awards brunch, the box beside the Nelson's was unchecked. 3:49 PM - Friday, December 9, 2005 - comments {0} - post commentLove Your EnemiesThis is fellow Witchity, Ian Lynch. Brian's post about honesty reminded me of this piece I wrote last year:In May of 2004 some well meaning birders directed me to what quite possibly might be the stinkiest place on the planet. In Port Norris, New Jersey there is a pile of clam shells that must be at least 30 feet high. Someone suggested that a way to endure the smell was to think of it as leftovers from last night’s seafood dinner. That would be OK except that it smells more like last month’s seafood dinner! On top of that, to find the birds, one must walk on grassy impoundments that are a tick nursery. After my short visit there I picked a dozen ticks off various parts of my body. Joining the assault are swarms of winged blood-suckers of varying shapes and sizes. It may seem at this point that the birders weren’t so well meaning after all. Considering that they, like we, were scouting for sites for birds in advance of the World Series of Birding perhaps they were tossing us a red herring (it certainly smelled like a dead fish!) Standing downwind of the malodorous mountain of shells, being eaten alive by tiny flying insects in the sweltering heat, knowing that ticks were at that very moment anticipating the taste of my blood, and all the while not seeing or hearing the King Rail that I was there to find, I was still willing to trust the information. Our team had been told about this bird and this location by the team that won the previous year (and repeated this past year). Actually, I had no good reason to trust them beyond the fact that the whole event hinges on trust. When the teams arrive at the finish line with their bird lists they have been running around New Jersey for the previous 24 hours completely unmonitored. The only system preventing rampant lying and cheating is the honor system. All in all, that is a pretty good system. Not only does that encourage trustworthiness, it also makes this perhaps the friendliest competition in the world. Out on that miserable dike I met a very pleasant fellow scout who confirmed that he had previously heard a King Rail at this location and shared a wealth of other information with me. He told me of a place to find a Prothonotary Warbler. Later that week when I saw him again I was able to thank him for that with the news that additionally I had found a Kentucky Warbler at the same location. Teams were also free with tips and tricks on finding birds and getting them to reveal themselves. This got me to thinking about Jesus’ command that we should love our enemies. It is too easy to approach much of what Jesus taught with the attitude that it is a lofty ideal beyond our reach. But my experience with the generosity of my competitors at the World Series of Birding made me realize that the best way to defeat your enemies is to treat them as your friends. I don’t ever expect our team to win the World Series, but since I could never muster any animosity toward other teams I could never feel like a loser. This “love your enemy” stuff is actually more practical than lofty. If more of us could truly believe that it works then maybe some day they will have a war and nobody will show up! 11:37 PM - Friday, November 25, 2005 - comments {0} - post commentThe Question of HonestyThe first thing that most people ask me once I tell them about the World Series of Birding, is "How do you know everyone is being honest about how many birds they count? Wouldn't it be easy to cheat?" I'm sure most birders who compete in this event get asked this question and are just as flummoxed as I am at how skeptical people are in regards to our collective honesty. My usual response is twofold. I first tell them that there is really no incentive to cheat as we would just be cheating ourselves. It is an event that chiefly raises money for conservation and in no way lines the pockets of those competing. Those of us without corporate sponsorship lose money during count weekend and do it sheerly out of our love of birding and not a sense of oneupmanship, although I would love to beat one of the "elite" teams. Secondly, if any team were to come out on top one year with "suspicious" birds on their list, they would immediately attract attention. If a rare bird is seen by only one group on count day and not seen by anyone else on count day or the next day, it would be circumspect as well. Admittedly, some years mistakes are made by every team in identifying birds. There are probably times when a team member shouts out "Canada Warbler" upon hearing a distant call, and maybe the others thought they heard something that sounded roughly like a Canada Warbler and agree to count it, although they never would have counted it had not one of them called it out. That is bending the rules a bit, but I don't think it happens often.. Most of us work very hard to get it right and make sure all of us "get" the bird. I remember last year when the other 3 guys heard the Piping Plover call but I missed it. There followed the 10 minute walk further down the beach to see the bird so that we all could count it. That 10 minutes was very valuable and we might have gotten a few more birds had we moved on. Of course, next year our team will be the only team to report the Black-tailed Gull, Eskimo Curlew, and Red-footed Falcon that are not seen the next day either, and we win the competition by 3 birds. I'll have to bring my camera. 11:55 AM - Tuesday, November 22, 2005 - comments {0} - post commentLogo
8:34 PM - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - comments {0} - post commentIntroductionFirst of all, I should say 'Hello' to all of those curious enough to visit our site. Thanks for stopping by. My name is Brian, and along with Cliff, Ian, Carl, and Ken, we make up the Wicked Witchities. I'm sure you'll get to know all of us from now until May 13, so I won't go into details right now. This is just to get us started. Last year we tied for 9th place with 191 species identified. This was our best year yet and we were very excited to make the top ten. The coveted 200 species will hopefully happen this next year and you can be along for the ride. Please provide us with comments and questions if you have any. We'd love to hear from you and hope you enjoy the site as it evolves over the next 6 1/2 months. We are also seeking corporate sponsorship for next years event. If you work with a company that might be interested in sponsoring our efforts this year, please contact us. This event does a great job raising money for bird conservation at a local and international level.
11:16 AM - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 - comments {1} - post comment |
Description This blog will feature information on the Friends of Salem Woods Wicked Witchities, a birding team competing in the New Jersey Audubon Society's World Series of Birding on May 13, 2006. We will include information on our past experiences, preparation for next year's event, scouting tips, photos of locales, and ending with live updates from the field on the day of the World Series. Home User Profile Archives Friends NJAS World Series Site Recent Entries - Big Day minus one - WSB scouting - WSB Monday - Hallucinations and Hope - White-tailed Hawk Update |
