Worst. Big Year. Ever.

I and the Bird #91 over at From the Faraway, Nearby

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So, it’s over. Finally.

The chasing, the worrying , the planning. I can put it all to bed. I was ready to.

I ended the year with a total of 299 species in North Carolina While it’s frustrating to fall short of the third century mark, such a total was definitely a realistic goal. A good birder can get 300+ in one year in this state. With a little luck I would have absolutely had it. When none of the homes with Rufous Hummingbirds in the area are showing, and the one public hummer in Raleigh is the much rarer, but already ticked, Black-chinned. Well, that’s just lousy luck.

Additionally, the following birds were all seen on eastern Carolina CBCs at the end of the year: Sandhill Crane. Iceland Gull. Black-headed Gull. Swainson’s Hawk. Barn Owl. Common Goldeneye. Nashville Warbler. Brant. Ross’ Goose. Lark Sparrow.

I got none of them. Bad luck. That’s birding, we know that going in. Birds fly, after all

And I could go on and on about misses. The bottom line is that you’re going to have them. You can minimize them, and I definitely could have done a better job there, but you’re going to have them.

A Big Year is an interesting proposition, one I don’t think I completely thought through when I jumped into it. I was certainly naive to think that I could make any run at the record, whether or not I ever really considered that to be a realistic goal. I have a great deal of respect for birders who can maintain the focus for the 12 whole months it takes to have a successful Big Year. I also learned that I’m not really that kind of birder.

A Big Day? Hell, yeah. Absolutely. A week-long trek in an exotic locale birding dawn to dusk every day? Sign me up. Extend it to two weeks? Do it, I’ll wash my clothes in the sink.

But to have the pressure of the number, the weight of each miss, the knowledge that I’d have to return again and again to get birds that I’d missed by sheer random chance the first time. That wears on you. At times it’s grueling. It wasn’t always fun, and I want birding to be fun. I don’t want the worth of a day’s birding to be determined by whether or not a saw one specific bird.

That’s not to say it didn’t have it’s high points, because it so clearly did. I saw lots of North Carolina and cleaned up on most outstanding life birds I could find within the state’s borders. I saw European Storm-Petrel, for pete’s sake, and self-found two great birds for the state, a Glaucous Gull at the Raleigh Dump and an Ash-throated Flycatcher in Croatan National Forest, neither of which were places I would have gone to if I hadn’t been Big Yearing.

That the Big Year was an excuse for me to get out to those places was a treat, except maybe the landfill. But so many of those places were multiple hours away, which was the part of the year that got the oldest. North Carolina has a loooong coastline, with great birds from north to south. In a perfect Big Year, you’re in a state with a smaller coast that focuses your birding on a few, highly productive areas, rather than the excellent, but widely disparate locales of the Tarheel state. Again, a better prepared Big Year birder has probably figured out how to handle such riches. That wasn’t me.

It came down to the fact that I was increasingly unwilling, as the year went on, to make the long drives necessary to be competitive. They took a lot of my free time. It turns out I’m something of a homebody, I enjoy spending time at home with my wife. If that’s my Big Year weakness, then so be it. At least I know, right? Sign me up for whatever exciting birding adventure you have, but for the time being, just don’t ask me to sacrifice every spare weekend for a year.

Will I do it again? Not in the near future but I might be able to see myself giving it another go at some point. There are a few things I’ll do differently, and they might be the sorts of things any other birder could use to put together a successful Big Year themselves. Three big issues…

• Cultivate relationships: It’s enormously useful to know people in all parts of the state, not only for the obvious reasons of having a place to crash, but more important, to have people who know the secret places to find the good birds. I’ve only lived in North Carolina for 4 years now. I know people, but not enough. In that way, a long established Carolina birder has a distinct advantage. This is something I’m making a priority this year, both with the Carolina Bird Club, and the local clubs. You can never know too many local birders.
• Get offshore: I did two pelagics this year. It wasn’t enough. A good year list in North Carolina requires several trips offshore to get a good variety of seabirds. Two of the biggest misses in my year, Greater Shearwater and Leach’s Storm-Petrel, are common off the NC coast. It was my luck that I missed both of them, but a second trip would have picked them up. When one factors in the almost limitless number of crazy rare birds that one could potentially run into, it’s almost a no-brainer for any state with a view of the ocean. The downside? Pelagics are expensive.
• Save money: The elephant in the room when talking about Big Years. I’m fortunate to have a relatively fuel-sipping automobile but the summer’s gas spike effected, and slowed, my chase in the middle of the year. I did cancel a couple planned excursions because of it. So it goes. That’s luck. In a different year, that’s not so much of a problem.

In spite of all this, the NC record was broken this year, by a established and experienced state birder who took lots of pelagics and drives a Prius, so he covered all those bases. That’s how you do it people.

Whatever frustrations or regrets I have will fade though. What I have in the end is a boatload of great memories, a start on a solid state list (I hadn’t kept one before this, my Big year plus a handful others rounded it out), a few good self-found birds that will help me build a reputation as a solid birder in the state, and a year’s worth of blog posts. I can’t complain too much.

Now about some of those Big Day records…