World Series of Birding 2009

We had high hopes for this year's World Series of Birding. We did very well in 2008 and this year we were in constant communication with all of the top teams during scouting. Scouting in Northern Jersey went very well with Bob and Sam locating nests of all of the raptors. I spent some time scouting South Western NJ but decided it would not give us enough species to warrant the additional time it would take to cover the area. Instead, I concentrated on the Dividing Creek area in Cumberland County. Jonathan was once again our go to guy for the Cape May area.

Just before the race, I made a tactical change in how we would cover the south. Brigantine NWR had a number of lingering ducks as well a good number of other species. We always seem to run out of time before we can get to Brig so I figured this year we come down from the north and hit Brigantine NWR first at around noon.

Jonathan, Sam and Bob listening in at the Great Swamp

This will allow us to cover Cumberland County in late afternoon at which time the local breeders will be more vocal. Of course there was no time to do a dry run which meant that we just had to hope for the best. We hoped plenty but we definitely did not get the best.

We started off at the Great Swamp and we were able to get most of the target birds with plenty of time to spare. Our next stop, Lewisburg Marsh, was also a hit as we picked up Pied-billed Grebe and Common Moorhen. Things slowed down a little until we reached the Wantage Grasslands. Bob decided to skip Vesper Hill this year and its replacement resulted similar results. For six hours we moved from place to place with specific starting and ending timeframes. Bob had everything planed to the minute which got us out of the north by 10:28am. Our total was about the same as last year because even though we had almost all of the raptors covered, we missed some of the warblers we expected to find. Nonetheless we left the north in good shape both time wise and count wise (close to 100).

The long trek to Brig proved longer than I though. Instead of getting there at 12:30 we arrive 48 minutes later. The other thing I did not count for was the amount of traffic at the refuge which resulted in our visit at the refuge to take a little over an hour. We all knew that we were in trouble by the time we left Brigantine at 2:20pm. We were picking up some nice birds but by the time we were done with Cape May Island, we knew we would have no time for Dividing Creek. The heavy rains that arrived at 8:00pm delivered the knock out blow for us. We had no more drive to even bother picking up a Chuck-will’s-Willow we had staked out at Bellplain. Our total of 159 was very disappointing as we thought that we would do better than last year’s 176 count.

We are proud of the fact that we raised $1,310 for the Lehigh Gap Nature Center and we got to see some great birds along the way so this race was not all doom and gloom for us. In fact we’re already thinking about our strategy for next year!!