At 12:01 am the competition began with a calling Yellow-breasted Chat. Then an Ovenbird gave its flight song and a Great Horned Owl started to call followed by a night flight Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Least Sandpiper. It was another great start to an exciting World Series of Birding for the MOS Yellowthroats.
Back in December when Matt Hafner (our fearless Captain of the previous three World Series) told us that he was not going to participate this year Bill Hubick, Zach Baer and myself had a big dilemma -- Do we just go with the old team and limit ourselves to three members or do we try to find a replacement for Matt? Months went by without finding our new fourth. Then one freezing morning in February Mikey Lutmerding, Bill and I were standing in the middle of the North Branch Spray Fields in Allegany County waiting for non existent Short-eared Owls when we popped the question to Mikey, do you want to be a Yellowthroat? Thankfully he said yes without too much persuasion. We had our fourth.
As the series got closer the strategy sessions became more frequent and our plan of attack began to formulate. Mikey went up and scouted the entire week prior to the competition. Zach and Bill followed on Tuesday night. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get up to New Jersey until Wednesday night. Mikey had spent most of the time scouting northern Cape May County and had staked out our secret dawn spot making sure all our necessary dawn birds were present and accounted for. Zach hit the ocean side and marshes hard searching lingering waterfowl and Bill scoured Cape Island hammering down the breeders and migrants we would need.
Just to give an example of what a day of scouting entails --
Finding out what time the Little Blue Herons leave the marshes to roost in the afternoon. Finding breeding Meadowlarks in not just one place but you have to have back-up spots. Then you need to know what time they sing. You have to find out how late the woodcocks call so you can make sure you are not at your woodcock spot too late. You need to make sure that the King Rails are calling at the time we needed them to be calling (which meant someone had to be out in the field at a very early hour). When you find a singing Kentucky Warbler in Belle Plain State Forest you rejoice until you come back the next day and it is not singing so you have to go and find another one. Where are the migrants hanging out? Are the migrants sticking in the same spots each day? What happens if there is a fallout? And thousands of other questions run through your head as you try to keep track of everything you are seeing and what time it is.
Thursday night the four of us got together and went bird by bird down the New Jersey Audubon Checklist. If we were not sure about the location for a certain bird it got an X. Out of he 220 relevant birds on the list there were not that many with X's. We felt good. With all of our scouting we were down to only a few questions and they could all be answered in the morning.
Friday we did our last minute scouting details and ended back at the hotel around 5:30pm, just enough time to get a few hours sleep before the Big Day started. But we couldn't sleep quite yet because we needed to write out our route times. It was another important chore that had to be done so we wouldn't lose track of time during the Big Day. Time is most valuable during the competition. All the teams have great birders. It is the teams who have the best routes and manage their time correctly that win. We knew it was important (Captain Hafner taught us that) so we timed out the entire 24 hour period.
It looked something like this:
12:00 -- 12:05 Talbot Sewage Ponds
10min 12:15 -- 12:30 Spring Road Impoundments
2min 12:32 -- 12:35 Llandaff Road Impoundments
40 min 1:15 -- 1:25 Horns Point
(I didn't use the real names on our route because the route is top secret)
We basically wrote down how long we were going to be at each place and how long it took to drive to the next spot. This way we would make sure we would have time to hit all our essential areas.
When 11pm hit Friday night the alarm went off and four very groggy but excited guys stumbled out of bed after three hours sleep, grabbed theie gear and headed to the WAWA to fill up the car and grab candy bars, oreo cookies, turkey wraps, and energy drinks. And then it began. We had an incredible night. Four species of Rail, Moorhen, Woodcock, Least Bittern, four species of Owl all ticked off. By the time we had hunkered down at our secret dawn spot we already had 32 species. By the time we left our dawn spot an hour later we had 58 species. Birds just kept coming our way. Breeders and migrants were sticking so all we had to do was drive slowly hear them call and Bill would tick them off the list. By 7:00am we hit the 100 species mark. Tough birds like Bobwhite, Kestrel, Bluebird, and Green Heron were seen and heard and excitingly we kept picking up a migrant every so often like Blackburnian and Black-throated Green Warblers. By mid morning it had started to rain so instead of doing our hawk watch we decided to spend time at Cape May Meadows. It was a good call. Five species of Swallow, a Bonapartes Gull, Blue-wing Teal, and Royal Tern were all ticked. Unfortunately, Mikey got on a Black Tern but no one else was able to get on the bird so it wasn't countable (we missed Black Tern for the day). By noon we were leaving Cape May Island with over 160 species. The Ocean marshes treated us well with Kingfisher, Harrier, and a Bufflehead that Zach had spotted while scouting. Next was Harlequin Duck and Oldsquaw also found by Zach earlier in the week. By the time we headed back inland we were up to 177 species. Luck just kept smiling on us, White-faced Ibis, Red-shouldered Hawk, Ruddy Duck, and Gull-billed Tern all fell into place. We also finally heard a Flicker (it was really starting to bother us that we didn't have Flicker). By 6pm we had 184 species. We spent the next five and half hours getting three more birds -- Black Skimmer, Chuck-wills-widow, and our last bird was a night flight Veery at 11:30. We felt good turning in our checklists with 187 species but we knew we had stiff competition. Fortunately, we won by three birds. The Cornell Team turned in 184.
It is awesome to be able to compete in any tournament where you have so much respect for your fellow competitors. The Cornell team and Micheal and Louise and the Tropicbird kids all were competing in our class. All the teams shared scouting information and even though the competition was fierce we all had a great time. The Yellowthroats would like to thank MOS for sponsoring the team and we are definitely looking forward to next year. Next year we will try not to miss Hairy Woodpecker!
Jim Brighton
Easton, Maryland
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