Big Day minus one

by 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 Millville Airport by 1:00.”  This year I’m willing to take 2:00 for a start time if the team scouting “the middle” can convince us to go for it and try for a half dozen or so species in Salem County.  Since I’m not sure that any of them are convinced that we should attempt it I doubt that we will be there this year.  There is also the problem that the weather (as well as the scouting reports from the north) seem to indicate that we may need more time up there this year.  In any case, I’m ready to find my inner type A personality and take on the southern challenge.

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 Cape May this year.  We’ll see how well we do picking up species early on the route so we can buy time to spend looking at the ocean in Cape May Point, before blasting north to Brigantine where we will watch the sun go down.  Last night’s swap meet provided some tantalizing information as did a couple of phone calls and conversations in the field.  Unfortunately, this can serve to overwhelm, so I’m trying to stick to finding all the birds we can in locations where I can expect to connect the dots in the time provided.  Today’s eleventh-hour scouting finally turned up a Piping Plover and almost a nest.  The reason for the “almost” is that I was watching NJ Wildlife staff scouring the beach for a nest where they presumably will erect an exclosure.  This was at Stone Harbor Point, where I also got a tip that there has been an occasional Gull-billed Tern.

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 - post comment