Where the Birds Are

The journey started in Philadelphia four days before the event started, Tuesday May 8^th, the where Craig and Erik split off to scout separate areas of New Jersey.  While Craig went off to scout the southern counties, Erik headed upstate to the northern portion of the route.  Erik’s area consisted of the northern grasslands and highlands, which focused on large numbers of sparrows, warblers, and hawks and would be done in the morning hours (3am-onward) on the big day.  The vast majority of these birds were found thanks to the diligent scouting done by the Nikon/DVOC adult team (Lagerhead Shrikes), who had been present in the area for over a week already and were kind enough to put up with Erik while they drove him about.  Craig focused on searching for late-afternoon singing passerines, seeing as on the big day we wouldn’t be reaching this area until the afternoon.  In addition to finding song birds in the south counties, Craig had to search nearby coastal swamps and beaches for easy to pick up shorebirds and waterfowl.  Unfortunately, this year the waterfowl seemed to be quite lacking in the usual areas of Cape May and surround areas, which could make or break our big day list.

After our several days of intense scouting, all four team members met up in a hotel in north-central New Jersey.  Our other team members who were not able to scout this year included Andy Bankert from Florida and Danny Williams of Connecticut.  After a quick happy-go-lucky meal at Friendy’s we went over some final notes and caught ourselves a few hours night sleep before the big day.  Our first destination was the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge to pick up our first night, marsh, and nocturnal migrants of the day.  Mostly satisfied with our success here we headed north, stopping at another marsh or two in search of a few more nocturnal singers.  Once dawn was nearing and we had arrived in the grasslands and were taking our first jog of the day up the slopes leading to Vesper Hill.  Here we started our first hours of morning birding by knocking off several grassland species including Grasshopper Sparrow, Vesper Sparrow, and Brown Thrasher before five in the morning.  After scraping up our last few grassland birds in the area, we headed up north towards High Point State Park, where we would focus on finding an abundance of breeding warblers and other passerines.  Stopping at specific mileages along the way we picked up the well timed out Ruffed Grouse and several crucial breeding warblers.  At this point we had begun our attack on our energy drink stash in preparation for our all out dash through the woods to the local Canada Warbler breeding location.  We eventually ran into the adult Nikon team here whose teammate commented on the abundance of free hats found lying on the roadside.  Craig was quick to notice he was wearing his favorite Whitefish Point hat which he had lost while stupidly hanging out the window listening for migrants.  Moments later on the road again Craig had lost the hate (for good this time) doing the exact same thing.  Several hours and many cookies later (not to mention a few new birds) we were high tailing to the southern horizons for our long anticipated Craig Bateman portion of the route.

The tough part during scouting was finding birds willing to cooperate by singing during the midday hours. After scratching up some breeding Kentucky, Prothonotary, and Yellow-throated Warblers, we had to check off our list of coastal specialties. We started in the Bi-valve area, where the tide and sun gave us perfect views at thousands of silhouettes of shorebirds, thanks. From here, we decided to make a risky decision and skip a few of our planned out stops for Brigantine Wildlife Refuge later in the day. Before we made it there, however, we still had quite a few birds to find in Cape May County. As we swept down the shoreline we had our scopes on hand at all times. Sea watching picked us up a Roseate Tern, Northern Gannets, and a distant jeager. By this point in the day we were at the mercy of speed limit signs. The sun was setting when we made it to Brigintine. This was the first time the youth Nikon team ever decided to go here and we were all very anxious. It made up for itself by a slim margin, with flyby Tricolored and Little-blue Herons, Gull-billed Terns, Chuck-wills Widow, snipe, and a number of new ducks. The final destination was Jake’s Landing; a huge marsh where we heard Black Rails right before a storm hit and the birding was done by about 11 A.M. We ended at the finish line with an empty tank of gas but an overall total of 204 species. National Geographic was there taking pictures of every team, so look for us there perhaps. They had been out most of the day searching for birders searching for birds. We ended up winning the Youth Division by a fair margin, which consisted of a record number of teams this year (over 20).

We would like to take a moment to thank everyone who made this wonderful event possible for us.  The Nikon sponsors were amazingly grateful in optics and funds they provided for our big day and this would not have been possible without them.  Not to be forgotten is the original sponsorship from the Florida Space Cost Birding and Wildlife Festival, whose coordinator Laurilee Thompson was incredibly willing to fly to Philadelphia to drive Erik four hours to the north (in the dark, late at night).  We also owe an immense amount of our success to the kindness of the Nikon/DVOC adult team.  They were always willing to share information and it is amazing they were able to put up with Erik for three days straight.  On the big day itself we had the fortune of having two awesome drivers, not only did they put up with our random direction shouting, but they were a fun addition to the group.  Can’t forget the parents who allowed us to go along and a few of which drove us around at one point or another and all the donors who helped us in our fund raising for Whitefish Point Bird Observatory ($2000 total!).