Catch-up: The Hinden-Bird

From way behind on blogging, Kenn writes: Okay, to set the scene, this was Sunday, April 26, and we were in the town of Idabel, down in the southeastern corner of Oklahoma. It was late evening. Jeff Cox, Jim Arterburn, and I were sitting in the motel, glued to The Weather Channel. We were trying to gauge the likelihood that our Big Day attempt the following day would be pulverized by weather. Storms were rampaging across the plains, and the commentators were having a field day with discussions of tornadoes and floods and lightning strikes, but these updates were inserted as interruptions in the regular program. That regular program was one of TWC’s funky specials: "When Weather Changed History: The Hindenburg Disaster." So while we waited for the return of the "Local on the 8s" and the detailed radar picture of the storms crossing Oklahoma, we were watching, over and over, grainy newsreel footage of the giant German airship crashing and burning in New Jersey in 1937, the mighty Hindenburg going up in flames. Reportedly in real life the airship burned up in about a minute, but on The Weather Channel it was burning up over and over, in excruciating detail, for a full hour.

In a masterpiece of understatement, Jeff made the dry observation that "This isn’t exactly a good omen for our Big Day."

Indeed it was not. We started at midnight, and despite the threatening skies we managed to hear most of our nocturnal targets: Whip-poor-wills, Chuck-will’s-widows, Virginia Rails, and more. When the gray dawn finally came, we continued to rack up notable birds: Neotropic Cormorant, Mottled Duck, Anhinga, local stakeouts that most birders wouldn’t expect in Oklahoma. But bouts of rain, and a stunning lack of migrant songbirds in the woods, continued to slow us down, and a slowdown was something that we couldn’t afford on this day. By the time we got to the western terminus of our route in late afternoon, a cold front had pushed through, with plummeting temperatures and a howling wind out of the north. We didn’t break the Big Day record for Oklahoma, and in fact we missed it by a mile. Of the three Big Days that Jeff and Jim and I have done, this was our worst species total.

I’m proud to say, though, that we didn’t just fail, we failed spectacularly. Our wildly ambitious route was one that certainly could produce 200 species on the right day, so I’m proud that we gave it a shot. We may have crashed and burned, figuratively speaking, but we had a great time anyway. If there were a category for competition in bad jokes and good laughs per day, we would have won that one hands down.

... maybe that should be Saffron Oklahoma Bustards

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher: the classy State Bird of Oklahoma

From home base in Ohio, Kenn writes: In a previous post (April 16) I mentioned that two friends and I were planning to try to break the Big Day record for Oklahoma next week. On either April 26, 27, or 28, depending on last-minute decisions about weather, we hope to find more species of birds in one day within the state boundaries than anyone has before.

As I write this, my friends Jeff Cox and Jim Arterburn are driving from Tulsa down to Lawton, in southwestern Oklahoma, for final scouting of the area. Soon I’ll be getting on a plane to go join them. I’ll be flying into Dallas - Fort Worth, not into any Oklahoma airport, and that’s an indication of how far south our route will be. The last two times that Jeff and Jim and I broke the state record, we were birding the northern tier of counties, very close to the Kansas state border. This time we’re doing a southern route, barely north of the Texas line. That option gives us a whole new set of possibilities.

When I was a rabid kid birder in Kansas, I acquired a book on Oklahoma birds by George M. Sutton, and I spent hours poring over its detailed accounts. It was amazing to read about all the birds that could be found in the southern counties of Oklahoma. McCurtain County, down in the southeastern corner, was like a chunk lifted straight out of Louisiana, with resident alligators and with southern birds like Brown-headed Nuthatch, Swainson’s Warbler, and Bachman’s Sparrow. Even White Ibis, Purple Gallinule, and Anhinga were possible. Then in the southwest part of the state, around the Wichita Mountains and farther south, there were all these birds that seemed like reminders of west Texas or New Mexico: Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Black-chinned Hummingbird, Rock Wren, Canyon Wren. Back in those days I marveled that all those birds could be in the same state, just a few counties apart. But I didn’t connect the dots and think about doing a Big Day that took in all these birds of the east and west.

In a few days, I guess we’ll find out whether or not it’s really possible. Naturally, now that we’ve committed to that series of dates, the weather forecast is calling for scattered thunderstorms across southern Oklahoma on all three days. But Jim and Jeff and I had to dodge rain showers the last two times we tried this kind of crazy stunt, in northern Oklahoma in 1996 and 2001, and we set records both times. Maybe we’ll get lucky a third time as well. But we could use positive thoughts and good wishes from anyone reading this!

Bio-Man and the Saffron Bustards

From an airport someplace, Kenn writes: Okay, I’ll give you a million dollars if you can figure out what this post is about, just from the title.

Ha. I didn’t think so.

To explain it, I have to give some background. First, you have to know that there’s a phenomenon known as a "Big Day" among birders, an attempt to identify as many different bird species as possible in one calendar day. It’s purely a game, with no scientific value or other redeeming quality whatsoever, producing a score which is of interest to no one except the participants. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun. I tell people that Big Days are my one vice: I don’t smoke or gamble and I almost never drink, but I do enjoy the rush of that 24-hour race against the clock to find as many birds as possible.

Second, you have to know something about Oklahoma. It’s a great state for birds, since it straddles the center of the continent and it gets birds typical of both the east and the west within its borders. But in terms of Big Day totals, Oklahoma has lagged behind its neighbors to the south (Texas) and north (Kansas). Texas is, well, Texas, and Big Days of 200-plus species are commonplace there. Kansas has the benefit of a great east-west highway, Interstate 70, connecting the woodlands on the eastern edge of the state with some fabulous shorebird refuges in the center of the state, and many Big Days of 200-plus have been done in Kansas as well. But so far no one has come close to 200 in a day in Oklahoma yet.

Third, I have to tell you that some of my earliest Big Days were done when I was a kid in Kansas, birding with my pal Jeff Cox. Jeff and I were in some of the same classes in school, he had become a rabid birder as well, and we often joined forces to comb the good habitats in the southwestern part of Wichita. We thought it was pretty good that we could run up one-day lists of over 100, traveling entirely by bicycle in our limited sphere. And maybe it was.

These days, my pal Jeff is now J. A. Cox, Ph.D., and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but he’s still a highly skilled birder. In 1996 I joined him and another sharp birder, Jim Arterburn, and we did an Oklahoma Big Day that tallied 177 species -- a new record for the state. Somebody came along a couple of years later and tied that record, so we went at it again in 2001, and pushed our total up to 180. But in the years since, other teams have had totals of 182 and 186 species. So we’re going to give it another shot. On April 26, 27, or 28 (depending on last-minute judgments on the weather), Jeff Cox, Jim Arterburn, and I are going to try to break the Big Day record for Oklahoma once again. We need a solid 187 species, although, of course, we’d be glad to see more.

So that’s the story. All I ask is that you send positive thoughts in our direction.

What? Oh, you’re still wondering about the title!

Okay, well, bustards are large birds of open country in the Old World (southern Europe and Asia, Africa, Australia). They’re sort of shaped like turkeys but they’re much stronger fliers. A Saffron Bustard, if there were such a thing, presumably would be named either for its flavor or for its color. "Bio-Man" is the nickname given to Jeff by his co-workers, presumably because of his Ph.D. in biology. Jeff has a tendency to come up with inventive names for things. In 2001, he referred to our Big Day attempt as "2001: A Bird Oddity." That wouldn’t work for 2009, so he suggested we call our team "Bio-Man and the Saffron Bustards."

I am not making this up.

By the time you finish reading this, I suspect you will have thought of the close alternate name that has already occurred to Jim and me. We WILL be sufferin’ during the event, no doubt, from the clash of our senses of humor. But with luck we’ll survive long enough to find 187 species. Wish us good fortune, please, won't you?