The Big Day-Year - 2022

Goal

To see as many bird species as possible within a calendar year, but limited to one calendar day per month. So one day in January, one day in February, etc. until 12 days count towards the year total. A compromise between a Big Year and a Big Day.

Introduction

• Long-distance friend and I wanted a friendly Big-Year-like birding challenge, but constrained by limited time and different geographies. He came up with the initial concept, and we refined the ground rules collaboratively.
• One calendar 'big day' per calendar month. Year total summed across months/days.
  • Day to be used must be publicly declared in advance. Cannot retroactively pick a productive day.
    • Initially guideline was that the deadline for declaration was midnight. Changed this to sunrise, after my May pelagic debacle.
• Picked state-level for the competition, as our respective states had surprisingly similar year totals.

Overall strategy

• Clean up as many regular species as possible, only chase vagrants if site is productive for broad range of species.
• Identify species that are only found during narrow time windows.
• March - wait until late in the month, to get as many early migrants as possible.
• NC pelagics were a potential advantage, as my friend gets seasick and would not do any, but would obviously be a small species total with high opportunity costs, a big risk.

Tools

• Download my eBird data after each month/day
• Wrote an R script for compiling totals
  • A spreadsheet would also work - download the region's checklist, and create columns for each month, and a 'total' column.
  • eBird trip reports useful for each month/day, but not for the year total, since they can only do continuous periods of time.
  • Maybe I could convert my R script into a Quarto document, and post that directly here!

Month-days

• January - Jordan Lake Christmas Bird Count
• February - Outer Banks
  • Focus on Alcids such as Razorbill
• March - Caswell Co.
• April - Howell Woods
• May - Hatteras pelagic
• June - Mountains, from Grandfather to Ashe/Alleghany Co.
• July - south coast
• Aug - East Shackleford Banks, Croatan NF
• Sep - Ridge Junction
• Oct - Ft. Fisher
• Nov - Outer Banks
• Dec - Wilmington

Results

• I built up a massive lead through the summer, but let it slip during the fall and winter, and ultimately lost by one(!) species.
• Total of 232 species, actually quite a good state year total by my standards.

Lessons learned

• Doing the pelagic for May was a tactical blunder, borne of hubris. Not only was it a poor pelagic, but the opportunity costs for that month were simply too high. Rough conditions on the way back also dampened my enthusiasm for coastal birding in the remaining light, which could have been productive had I been in better spirits.
• Some of the 'big days' were actually quite intense and strenuous, beyond the spirit of what I was anticipating. In particular, my June day picking up mountain species was a massive full day with an enormous amount of driving.
  • Other days were perhaps too casual