2012: Birdwatching Big Year!
The movie The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black, is based on a true story about three men“who race across the continent on a Big Year, a whirlwind competition to see who can observe the most species of birds in North America within one calendar year”.
Which got us to thinking… let’s see how many bird species we can collectively document in the park over the next year! We were delighted to catch the interest of the Birding Club of Delaware County (BCDC): they will help us with our count, and eBird Reviewer and BCDC blogger Albert Guarente even announced our Park Big Year before we did!
We will enter all of the sightings on eBird on the Glen Providence Park Bird List. Help us out– enter your park sightings on eBird, or email us your sightings at friendsoftheglenATgmail.com and we’ll enter them for you!
We will enter all bird sightings throughout the year, not just “new” species for 2012, to create as complete a picture as possible of how birds are using this bird sanctuary. And we’ll photograph as many species as we can, of course- you can track our progress in our facebook wildlife album.
Our Park Bird List, the Christmas Bird Count and the Park’s Big Year are all part of our efforts to document the park’s wildlife and participate in citizen science.
We’ll start our Park Big Year on New Year’s Day 2012. On January 1, 2013, we’ll run a report on eBird and see how we did- until then, track our progress on our 2012 Bird List!
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We’re off to a strong start in our Big Year in Glen Providence Park- we identified 34 species in January, including the Great Blue Heron, Red-tailed Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Brown Creeper and Great Horned Owl!
We’re up to 38 species this year, with additions in February including a Sharp-shinned Hawk, and a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers!
We are up to 42 species for our 2012 Big Year, with March additions of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Winter Wren, American Goldfinch, and Eastern Phoebe.
We’re up to 50 species in 2012, with April additions of the Wood Duck, Wood Thrush, Tree Swallow, Common Yellowthroat, House Wren, Brown-headed Cowbird, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and Ovenbird!
What a month! We are up to 73 total species in 2012, with 23 additions in May including: Great Crested Flycatcher, Warbling Vireo, Red-eyed Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Baltimore Oriole, Northern Parula, Blackpoll Warbler, Veery, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Spotted Sandpiper, Scarlet Tanager, Black-and-white Warbler, American Redstart, and Eastern Wood-Pewee.
Many thanks to Al Guarente and Dave Eberly of the Birding Club of Delaware County for their expert help, and to the migrating warblers who visited Glen Providence Park!
In June we added the Eastern Screech-Owl, so we are up to 74 for this year.
We had 2 exciting additions in August, with reports of a Bald Eagle and Great Egret! That’s 76 and counting…
And yesterday’s pair of Magnolia Warblers brings us to 77!
With October’s additions of the Blue-headed Vireo and Hermit Thrush, then the Golden-crowned Kinglet and Swamp Sparrow today, we are up to 81 for our Birding Big Year! Thank you to Nick Pulcinella and Nick Crocetto for leading today’s Bird Walk.
Looks like I missed a Purple Finch this morning- and we are up to 82! It was likely Nick or Nick who entered it on eBird…
A Fox Sparrow in November brought us to 83!
We ended our Big Year with 83 species… and 99 total bird species documented in Glen Providence Park! A tremendous thank you to the Birding Club of Delaware County for its help.
https://glenprovidencepark.org/2013/01/16/our-2012-birding-big-year/