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!

Degrees of Separation

Drygalski Fjord, South Georgia Island, Antarctic Region

Oak Harbor, Ohio, United States of America

From the snow belt, Kenn writes: During our whole trip to Antarctica, the coldest air temperature we experienced was about 29 degrees Fahrenheit, or just below freezing. When our flight from Buenos Aires landed at Dallas-Fort Worth, it was 16 degrees out, and our connection was delayed by three hours because of complications in de-icing the plane. And when we finally made it back to the Detroit airport, our dear friends Vic and Lois were there to meet us, but they had braved icy winds and snow-covered roads to be there. Were we cold in the Antarctic? No! But coming home was something of a shock!

Our first morning back at home, we had to shovel a path to the bird feeders, but soon we were rewarded by returning guests: our first Northern Cardinals of the year, our first Blue Jays of the year. After weeks of novelty among the penguins and petrels and other southern seabirds, it was reassuring to reconnect with these familiar backyard denizens.

We are pulling together all our notes and our (thousands of) photographs, and we hope to start posting information about our Antarctic trip in a more organized way very soon!