Outing #10 - Global Big Day!

05/13/2016

Tomorrow, May 14th, is Global Big Day during which the Cornell Lab of Ornithology encourages birders to visit as many places as possible and record as many bird species as they can. The goal seems to be to get a snapshot of bird distributions and population numbers around the world on one specific day.

Because the goal is to sample broadly, I've decided to forego the more common birding spots where others are likely to go, and instead revisit some of the trails I first birded for my Raleigh Greenway Blog. My plan is to visit two or three different places, trails that I particularly enjoyed the first time I birded them, but which will probably not be visited by other birders that day.

I plan to start with a section of the Neuse River Trail, heading north from near Milburnie Dam. The unpaved access point to this trail passes an area where I've seen Red Headed Woodpeckers before, and toward the northern end, passes by a kind of swampy area with several dead trees that I remember having a lot of birds last time I was there (including Pileated Woodpeckers which I haven't managed to see this year). Next, I will go to Rothgeb Park and travel east from there on the Crabtree Creek Trail. I remember there being some open grassy spaces on this trail last time, and a couple of less common species. If I have time, I'll head last to one of my favorite Greenway trails, the Abbott's Creek Trail, where the chances of seeing Red Headed Woodpeckers are again very high.

06/02/2016

My Global Big Day outing was a moderate success. I ended up visiting just two of the three trails - the Neuse River Trail from Mile Marker 15.25 to 13.5, and then the Crabtree Creek Trail from Rothgeb Park to Mile Marker 8. Both trails looked a bit different this time around. I hadn't birded either of them in late Spring before, and the heavy foliage made spotting some of the birds a bit more difficult.

On this outing, I was hoping to pick up some of the species that I haven't seen yet this year, particularly some of the more common ones.  According to the Wake County frequency list that I downloaded from eBird.org at the start of the year, there are still 15 species from the Top 100 that I haven't yet seen.  They are:

Ruby Throated Hummingbird (#49), Rock Pigeon (#51), Red Eyed Vireo (#55), Pine Siskin (#56), Swamp Sparrow (#61), Pileated Woodpecker (#68), House Wren (#75), White Eyed Vireo (#77), American Coot (#82), Wood Thrush (#87), Brown Creeper (#90), Eastern Wood Pewee (#91), Purple Martin (#93), Acadian Flycatcher (#94), and Barred Owl (#98).


I'm sure I've seen a Rock Pigeon somewhere in the County this year, probably when I wasn't on a formal birding walk, but didn't think to record it. That one should be easy to pick up in the coming weeks. Some of the species I've missed, like the Brown Creeper, Pine Siskin, Swamp Sparrow, and American Coot are gone for the summer, so I'll have to wait until Fall or Winter to pick them up.  But that leaves ten or so species that I still might have had a shot at. On Global Big Day, however, I only picked up one new species for the Wake County Project list:  White Eyed Vireo (#77). I was fortunate to get a good look at it on both trails, and this was my 100th bird for the project, so that was a nice milestone to set.

100)  White Eyed Vireo

My next outings will be focused on any rarities that are reported on the BirdsEye App, and trying to pick up those birds from the Top 100 frequency list that I haven't yet seen. I'll need to target localities where these particular species are frequently recorded.  That should be fairly easy with eBird's help.