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PA Big Day Details |
| Date | Oct 13, 2007 | ||||||
| Number | 116 | ||||||
| # Seen by All | 115 | ||||||
| Area | County | ||||||
| County | Bucks | ||||||
| Time | 0500 to 2030 | ||||||
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| 155 Miles by car, 3 miles by foot. Visiting: Bucks County only: Quakertown Swamp, Haycock Mt., Nockamixon SP, Pine Run Dam, Core Creek Park, Rohm & Haas, Penn Warner Club. Species of note: Brant (R), Great Cormorant (E), Dunlin (R), Swainson’s Thrush (L). On Saturday the 13th, having many things better but nothing more addictive to do, Devich Farbotnik and I decided to declare war on the October Pennsylvania Big Day record of 112. I had set that record less than a week earlier with Mike Tanis and Mike Schall, but these things, as I said, are addictive. Unless you’ve likewise been bitten, you have no idea how good it feels to scratch the itch. Oh, we’re used to mixed reactions from friends, family, and other functional human beings. Some at least admire us for taking a crack at the numbers; others think we’re simply taking crack. Dev and I did the math and decided we could better the mark with a route limited to Bucks County, thus minimizing travel time and making optimal use of the waning daylight. It was the first time I had done math since high school. I’m more of a Lehigh Valley guy myself, but it’s hard to argue with someone who’s recorded Pink-footed Goose, Band-rumped Storm-Petrel, Yellow, Black, Clapper, and King rails, Long-billed Curlew, Curlew Sandpiper, Northern Wheatear, and Sage Thrasher on his home turf, among a number of other incredibly unfair things. I think I found a Surf Scoter in my county once. None of the above species appear in this report. We met at the Quakertown Giant at 0530 and hopped over to Quakertown Swamp, where we both heard Barred Owl and Sora (with some coaxing), but where I was forced to smile dumbly until my sorry ears could finally register the Virginia Rails that Devich had dutifully pointed out about half a dozen times. It would be a problem throughout the day. Sometimes I think Devich has bionic hearing. Either that or I’ve been listening to the Spice Girls too loudly. I cringe to imagine what I miss when I’m birding alone. In any case, the Black Rail tape got a robust response from a Virginia, and we managed to put names to a pipping Purple Finch, White-throated and Swamp sparrows, and one indignant snipe. All the Black Rails were strangely silent. Dawn at Haycock Mountain north of Lake Nockamixon found us in the company of hunters. Only Dev had an orange vest, but I figured if I had to, I could take one for the team. Immediately and simultaneously, Pileated and Red-bellied woodpeckers and a Northern Flicker trumpeted in our vicinity. A hilly hike through the slowly lightening woods to the Red-headed clearing finished our woodpecker sweep (we had multiple Hairies and sapsuckers), and Dev’s whinnying iPod summoned forth from the thickets, to quote an old Pete Dunne account, “the world and everything in it”: phoebe; Black-capped Chickadees with the Carolinas; one braying Red-breasted Nuthatch; a creeper; Winter Wrens; both kinglets; Magnolia, Black-throated Blue, Yellow- rumped, and Blackpoll warblers; juncos; and a genuine screech-owl. Overhead were robins, waxwings, grackles, a Sharpie, more Purple Finches; by a stream was a faintly calling Swainson’s Thrush that Dev logged as the day’s only unshared bird. No, I couldn’t hear the stupid thing. Nor could I hear Dev’s first few White-breasted Nuthatches—which concerned me, because nuthatches do not normally call at a frequency difficult to detect. Like I said, it would be a problem. At least Devich had opted to walk this time. Back in May, he’d decided to sprint down the mountain. Some valiant lumbering on my part had kept the gap between us to several hundred yards, but upon my arrival at our vehicle, I’d discovered I’d apparently exhaled a number of internal organs onto the forest floor in route. By contrast, I finished Saturday’s hike more-or-less whole. It is a blessing to proceed gradually. We could hardly have enjoyed a better passerine showing. Next came lakes Towhee and Nockamixon. The former proved the kind of experience Big Day birders will cheerily sacrifice health and mental wellness for, producing pintail among seven species of waterfowl, two Red-shouldered Hawks, kingfisher, a drop-in pipit, and pumpkin-breasted Rusty Blackbirds with the Red-wingeds. So the latter was a happy affair, even if Lake Nox itself held merely a Lesser Black-back and a smattering of cormorants. We got a kick out of some Black Vultures sitting like ducks in the grass, and besides, we pegged Osprey and Savannah Sparrow and pished Blue-headed Vireo, Black-throated Green Warbler, and Chipping Sparrow out of a pine stand. On the way out, I crashed into the underbrush to pursue a pheasant Dev had seen disappear, and was rewarded not only with the sneaky release, but with a distinctly uncomfortable sensation around my nether quarters. An astonishing quantity of small, fuzzy burs had evidently developed a fondness for my pants. Intending to move north to south and stay south, we felt a side-trip to kestrel country was in order. It produced Cooper’s Hawk, Brown-headed Cowbirds, and House Finches in addition to the kestrels, but we would tally three more kestrels down on the river in the evening. Of course, we couldn’t have known that. Just as we couldn’t have known that as we bypassed Peace Valley Nature Park, four birds we would ultimately miss were hanging out there. (For the record: Blue-winged Teal, Bald Eagle, Bonaparte’s Gull, and Hermit Thrush, but it hurts to talk about ‘em.)What mattered was that when we reached Pine Run Dam, both the clock and the species count were in our favor. Plus, I made it through the overgrown zone without accumulating on my person a single pod from that most irritating of weeds,which Devich tells me is called tickseed trefoil, but which I like to call The Evil Triangle Plant. A Marsh Wren and several Palm Warblers in the bag, we were,with the Carpenters, on top of the world. Remind me to reference tougher music next time. Now that I’d made up goldfinch (whew) at Pine Run, I could rest easy to help Devich pad our total with further acquisitions. We were down to almost no unshareds and up to...I don’t know...something good; so we were, as I remember Dev noting, “sitting pretty.”The problem with any Big Day from October through March is the relatively low ceiling on possibilities. We patched a few holes in our list between the Churchville (shoveler) and Core Creek (Great Egret, shorebirds) areas, even nailing swift and rough-winged swallow along a road whose identity now escapes me— and then our transit was o’er and we had gained the South. And our rate of day birds per hour began to decrease alarmingly. In Bristol, we made short work of Great Black-backed and Laughing gulls and Great Cormorant, but the turnpike bridge peregrines had chosen (in a shocking display of bad taste) to prefer New Jersey.We gave a private shorebird hotspot the onceover, getting six species (Killdeer, Lesser Yellowlegs, Solitary/Spotted/Least/Pectoral [15-20] sandpipers), snagging two juvenile Semipalmated Plovers on the twice-over, and iced things with Field Sparrow and two extra pipits. Competent auditory performance continued to elude me. On my cell phone on the walk out, I interpreted a family member’s query of “Have you eaten?” as “Why are you an emu?” Confusion ensued. The peregrines were still slumming on our way into Tullytown. It was crunch time. We would obtain only Herring Gull at our first private stop, but we did find some comic relief in suburbia. A bunch of bored teens were staging pratfalls to entertain passing traffic. We knew they just wanted a reaction, but at the sight of a somewhat hefty boy barreling face-first into an overhanging sign and wiping out flat on his back, we couldn’t help but forgive them. “Deliberate or not,” we guffawed, “that must have hurt!”We chortled all the way to the duck ponds, which had ducks, fortunately. Ruddies...wigeon...Ring-neckeds...Gadwall on the very last muck-hole we checked...plus coot. But it took a merganser-less detour to Morrisville just to hear a blamed Fish Crow. We had 105, needed 113, and were distressingly option-deprived. On the edge of that despair that not even the sight of children injuring themselves can alleviate, we located our Dunlin when we needed it most, on the edge of a Falls Township park pond, with Killdeer. Me: “Are these all Killdeer?” Dev: “...No.” Back in business, baby! Devich didn’t know I was about to strangle him when he decided we needed to “swing by” the turnpike bridge a third time, but the third really WAS a charm, since the lovably helmeted falcons had returned to their senses (Pennsylvania). Number 107. We had one site remaining—Dev’s private overgrown dredge-spoil impoundment of recent Connecticut Warbler reliability—and less than an hour of sun. Six songbirds? This late? Into the ragweed we hacked.... Number 108 was a House Wren that joined a Blackpoll in harassing Dev’s thirty gigabyte screech-owl. Number 109 was Common Yellowthroat. I should mention that between those successes, Dev got me on a catbird and a flock of turkeys, both of which I’d missed earlier. Wild Turkey was new for him on the property. It was ugly, pushing through weeds the shape and height of young larch trees, but when we reached the low patch that had hosted a Nelson’s Sharp-tailed Sparrow the weekend prior, we flushed a number of (#110) meadowlarks—and they were new for Dev on the property! Out of light and desperate for three more species, we hauled ourselves up on the dirt berm of the impoundment and attacked the rank growth below with all manner of noise.“Lincoln’s Sparrow!” shouted Devich.“Get the heck out! ... Got it!” “White-crowned Sparrow, singing!” “Get the HECK out! ... GOT it!” “IIIIIIINDIGOOO BUUUNTIIIIING— SINGING!” It had no business singing, but it was. It was past sunset, and we were past 112. Black-crowned Night-Heron, heard and vaguely seen, was number 114. No sooner had it flapped into obscurity than a Great Horned Owl sounded off in fine baritone. We became greedy. Number 116, the dainty silhouette of a Brant in a line of Canadas, went down smooth. We would try a wild card or two, but as it turned out, that goose was our swan song. Well, a fine finish it had been! A great, taut conclusion to a day most deserving of a detailed account. We celebrated at Chick-fil-A, where I knew God was on our side, because that accursed cow mascot was nowhere to be seen. [addendum: The next morning, Devich found Surf Scoter, Common Merganser, Common Loon, Common Moorhen, Hermit Thrush, and Ovenbird—all which we’d missed—in the areas we’d “covered” the night before. Upon learning this at the high school where I teach, I dealt with my frustration constructively by sending a random student to the principal’s office.] | |||||||