On Superbowls and Superbloggers

A funny thing about blogs. Even if you don’t necessarily mean to, you end up putting quite a bit of who you are into them. And the flip side, when you read another’s blog, you certainly feel as though you know them, even if you’ve never met them. The way a person writes casually gives you a pretty good insight into the nature of the individual, and, if you regularly engage in a dialogue through comments, you end up having a fairly good idea of which nature bloggers you’d probably enjoy a day in the field and a couple beers afterward with.

If I were making an actual list, guys like Corey at 10,000 Birds, Patrick at Hawk Owl’s Nest, Quintus at Owl Box and Christopher at Picus Blog, would undoubtedly be near the top. I regularly read and enjoy and communicate though the interwebs with all those guys. And when I was approached to see if I wanted to participate in a birding competition with them, the lure of a hard day’s birding and more than a dozen possible lifers including stunners like Ivory Gull, Hawk Owl and King Eider was too much to turn down. And just to get it out of the way, the persona each one adopts in their respective blogs is precisely the same person they are in real life. Each one easy-going and all about the birds, exactly the kind of people you’d want to spend a day in the field and a couple beers afterward with. For that alone, this trip was a real pleasure.

But enough about all that, the competition itself was fierce and grueling, and to accurately portray how cold it was would require language I’m not really comfortable using on this site (but talk to me offline? Wow!).

From the moment at 5:00 am on the dot when we spot-lighted our first Hooded Mergansers, Black Ducks, and the only Coots we’d get all day (rare that far north), we were off and running at a breakneck pace, not even stopping for lunch or coffee. The birds were our sustenance and our caffeine as we navigated the back roads of Essex County, Massachusetts. I don’t think I could give a play by play even if I wanted to as the whole day is something of a bird fueled binge of adrenaline, pretzeled bread and binoculars. But some highlights are definitely in order.

• The first birding in the light in the area of Gloucester Harbor was great. Not only did I pick up my life Iceland Gull from the nearly 20 in the area, but the opportunity to check out adult Common Eider up close and personal was super cool for someone who’s only seen the wayward juvis that end up in North Carolina from time to time. That, friends, is one sharp bird.

Photo by Corey Finger. Used with permission

• Scanning Brace Cove and picking up Dovekie, our first and only 5 point bird and getting the 3 point bonus that goes along with being the first to report it, along with another life bird for me, Black Guilliemot, at the same spot.
• Christopher asks, “Can anyone imitate a turkey?” We immediately break into a series of increasingly terrible turkey impressions out the window. Then a Wild Turkey, on cue, pops up from behind a snow bank.
• Walking all the way out to the sea at Halibut Point, expecting to find nothing but cold, and turning up a 4 point Double-crested Cormorant. Not to mention the first adult male Harlequin Ducks I’d even seen, an impossibly beautiful duck that suffers from the same issues as Eiders in North Carolina, that is, only juvis.
• Towards the end of the day at Salisbury, Mass finding the lifer trifecta of Common Redpoll, Lapland Longspur, and White-winged Crossbill in a matter of half an hour.

We also had some disappointments. The kind you’re definitely going to have in a competition like this. Birds fly, after all. There was the Sapsucker, a 5 point bird, staked out at a feeder that we spent 20 crucial minutes looking for only to leave without finding (on the plus side, we did find our only Pine Siskins and Red-breasted Nuthatch there). The Eastern Bluebirds that every one of us saw on different occasions, but couldn’t get the majority of the team on any single bird (as per the rules).

There was also the King Eider that no amount of scanning turned up and the staked out Pileated Woodpecker that didn’t come out of its hole till well after we had to leave. A 5 point Dickcissel that maddeningly stayed hidden among the hundreds of House Sparrows and the frustrating Snowy Owls that stayed invisible in the snow at Parker River NWR in the fading light. And, of course, there was that damn Ivory Gull, that thankfully no other team saw, but sadly we didn’t either. Any couple of those birds and we’re on top for at least one of the categories. All of them and we’re close to an outright victory.

In the end we did really well on the commoner species, the ones up to three points. Where we fell short were the big point birds, and we had good shots at at least three. And that’s the primary reason we finished a solid 4th place in species for the day, but 6th when all the points were added up.

But you can’t dwell on the birds we missed, because it didn’t really matter. We were a first time team, mostly from out of state, and succeeded both in bringing Mass Audubon’s Super Bowl of Birding to the wider nature blogging and birding communities and having a great time besides. This is a really fun event, all the more so because I was fortunate to be able to do it with great bird bloggers who just so happen to be pretty solid birders too. I can’t say enough good things about those guys. Big thanks especially to Christopher though, as the local who had to do all the prep work not only finding where the birds are and putting together a killer route, but handling accommodations and transportation logistics too. If we fell short, it certainly wasn’t because of him.

Besides, winning can always wait till next year, even if an Ivory Gull won’t.