WSB scouting

by 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 - post comment