Summary

The 9th Annual New Haven Bird Club Big Sit! has come and gone. To say that we are growing by leaps and bounds might be an understatement. Last year's record of 66 circles was blown away by this year's total of 116. Also last year's record of 23 states/countries was surpassed by this year's total of 31. We added two new states (Idaho and Massachusetts) and two new countries (Mexico and South Africa). This year's species total surpassed last year's by 177 (609 compared to 432)!!

Save this date!....OCTOBER 13, 2002.  That will be the next date for The Big Sit!

Lone Star Landslide

On September 21st, Richard Gibbons posted an email to the Texbirds listserv about The Big Sit!. Clay Taylor from Swarovski Optik picked up on the post and challenged Texans to take the Top State title from California. Well, they lived up to the challenge and then some. Whereas Texas hosted only three circles in 2000, this year the Lone Star State hosted 25! Not only were the numbers huge, but there was also some strategy behind it. Jim Stevenson got the Bolivar Birders (a newly formed group) ready for the competition by giving slide shows and making field trips out to their circle location. Even more selfless was the effort of Mark Adams. Mark abandoned his former spot along Lake Balmorhea and instead hiked into the Davis Mountains where he expected a shorter list. The idea was that this habitat was not likely to be covered by other Texan Sitters!, and thus he'd have some species not encountered elsewhere in the state. His strategy worked. Of the 29 species he counted on TBS!, 10 were not seen in any other Texas circle. In the end, the Texas crushed all the other states and countries, bettering the 2nd place state (California) by 69 species (228 to 159).

Location, location, location

The choice of where to place your circle is sometimes easy and sometimes hard. In the end, this is the biggest variable that a Sitter! has control over. A good area for a walk could be a poor area for a Sit! if there isn't a vista showing a variety of habitats. Sitters! again used towers and scaffolds to get a bird's-eye view from their circles. John Arvin tried to get permission to place their circle on top of the South Padre Island Convention Center, but was denied by those in charge. As John put it, "apparently they were afraid we would get so excited by our nation-sweeping victory that we might be overcome and fall off the roof."

Sally Adam decided to Sit! next to a sewage treatment plant in Cape Town, South Africa. What seemed like a good idea for birding, wasn't such a good idea for smelling. Sally's report started off as "THE BIG SH..., I mean, SIT!" At one point, Sally and her teammates wondered if they were suffering the after-effects of National Curry Week.

A number of circles competed with other people for their areas. The birds around Vicki Hatfield's lake in Grove, Oklahoma were scared off by many bass boats. Fishing boats, water skiers, and hunters chased away birds in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Fisherman moved into Falcon Heights, Texas in enough numbers to force Dick Heller to give up Sitting! by 11am.

Shiver in My Bones Just Thinking About the Weather

Weather plays a big role in what Sitters! see. On October 14th poor weather stretched from the northeast down through the midwest. In Tawas, Michigan Mike Petrucha watched his scope blow over. The Surf Scopers of Milford, Connecticut described it "like we were sitting inside a giant sponge." NHBC Big Sit! founder John Himmelman made at least one trip to his car to defog his scope. Bill Thompson III and the Indigo Hill birding crew Sat! through "a scene from The Perfect Storm." Poor weather also gripped parts of the northwest. Luckily, the rain in Everett, Washington stopped 5 minutes before Arthur Grimes was going to give up.

Of course, having circles "from sea to shining sea" you would expect that some areas had good weather. Roy Gerig noted that Oregon had been going through a long drought, so much so that many acres of wetlands had dried up to a few puddles. Jennifer Rycenga may have had the best weather, but she paid for it. By the end of a beautiful sunny day in Palo Alto, California, she walked away with a sunburn.

New One for the List

Parking yourself in one spot for long periods of time does have some advantages. First, you end up in the location at times that you normally would not be there. This could translate into seeing species that don't normally come around in "prime-time". Second, being relatively immobile forces you concentrate more and focus on every little movement, chirp, and fieldmark. This helped me add two species to my backyard list - Swamp Sparrow and Eastern Wood-pewee.

I certainly wasn't the only one adding to a list. Sandy Berger had an Orange-crowned Warbler in her Arkansas backyard. At Calero Reservoir in San Jose, California, John Mariani added Common Raven to the park list. In Washtenaw County, Michigan, the Washtenaw Wingnuts had the first Common Tern seen there since 1949. The Under the Bridge Birding Gang of Port Orange, Florida added Great Horned Owl to the Dunlawton Bridge list. The "Ft. McHenry Wetlanders" (aka "The Star Spangled Birders") added two new species to their park list - Sora and Eastern Meadowlark.

Lists of various circles have grown over the years. In Unionville, Indiana they had a stretch of 2 1/2 hours where 6 of 7 species were new to their circle list...Broad-winged Hawk, Peregrine Falcon, Horned Lark, Brown Creeper, Forster's Tern, and Common Tern. In the 6 years that they have Sat!, they have 100 species on their list. Not bad for a backyard in the middle of the continent. John Himmelman noted that their list at Milford Point, Connecticut is up to 131. Says John, "That's more than a third of the birds in our state - that's from one spot sat at the same time of year!" The folks with Tom Heatley at Metro Beach - South Marsh in Lake St. Clair, Michigan have seen 109 species since their first TBS! in 1996.

When it comes to annual totals at any one site, the comments of Peter Wilkinson of Bedfordshire, England sum it up...."Remarkably consistent in totals at this site, though the composition always changes slightly at the margins."

What was THAT?!

There were a few oddballs and mysteries that caused Sitters! to scratch their heads. In Grove, Oklahoma Vicki Hatfield was stymied by a bird she initially thought was a hybrid Wood Duck x Mallard. Jennifer Rycenga had another hybrid in Palo Alto, California - Glaucous-winged Gull x Western Gull. John Arvin and company at South Padre Island in Texas saw two large goatsucker-like birds scream around the corner of the building they were next to. They tried to chase the birds to get confirmation on what they saw, but came up empty. They did manage to find a Barn Owl in their excursion, and were able to count it when it the bird flushed while someone back in the circle was able to see it. Another odd footnote about the South Padre Island circle....on a restroom run, they found body parts of a Virginia Rail, Seaside Sparrow, and Common Nighthawk along the edge of the building. They speculated that it was either the work of a Peregrine Falcon or other miscellaneous scavengers after the birds mortally wounded themselves by crashing into the large windows. Most interestingly, none of these three species were seen during the SPI Big Sit! In fact, Seaside Sparrow wasn't seen in any of the 116 circles.

Long time, no see

We got to see a couple species on October 14th that we haven't seen in a while. It has been 5 years (1996) since a Sooty Shearwater or a Hooded Oriole has appeared on a TBS! list. The last White-rumped Sandpiper seen on a Big Sit! was 8 years ago (1994). Finally, the biggest "Welcome Back" is reserved for Baird's Sandpiper which hasn't been seen on a Big Sit! since the original TBS! in 1993.

What's On The Menu

As always, many circles enjoyed feasts normally seen at football tail-gating parties rather than birding hotspots. The menus items were as diverse as the habitats. The Twitch Wiffers in Ukiah, California grilled venison hamburgers, sausages, and peppers. Mark Adams feasted on burritos in Jeff Davis County, Texas. Chicken soup and apple crisp were on the menu for the Ovenbirds at the Pfeiffer Nature Center in Portville, New York.

Some distant places enjoyed the same items. For instance, beef jerky was on the menu at the Indigo Hill Birding Tower in Whipple, Ohio and in the picnic fare of The Bald Eagles in Milford, Connecticut. Chili could be sampled at the IHBT and Lexington, Oklahoma with the Edge of the Earther's along with potato salad and chocolate chip cookies. In the words of Cyndie Browning, "The chili lights your fire while the potato salad cools it off!"

The birds did their fair share of eating too. An Osprey munched on a good-sized golden carp at the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale, New Jersey. Richard McCormick observed a Cooper's Hawk taking an American Goldfinch in Oxford, Connecticut.

The Final Word

As always, if you find anything that is wrong, please let me know. This is a monumental project for one person to undertake and your patience with my limitations is greatly appreciated. Countless hours go into making this event happen between email, US mail, phone calls, and, of course, slaving at the keyboard. This project is now behind me, and now I get to rest for about eight weeks - that's when the sap starts running in the sugar maples.  If you think I am exhausted now, wait until the end of March.