Nick Komar’s “Biggest Year” in USA Birding - 2023

[i welcome this first entry to my Biggest Year Blog submitted by Nicholas Alexander Komar, my 29 year-old son and occasional birding partner. If anyone else wishes to write a cameo essay as part of this blog, you are welcome to do so, either by submitting it to me by text (970-449-3645 or email (mocinno65@gmail.com), or by using the comment field. - Nick Komar] I’ve  been closely monitoring my Dad’s Big Year progress. Every morning I log into eBird, find my Dad’s profile page, and look through his newly submitted checklists from the previous day. This lets me vicariously go birding to all the amazing places his journey takes him, while also making sure my Dad hasn’t succumbed to his crazy ambitions. At this stage in Dad’s Big Year, I know he has to grind for every new species. There is only about 6 weeks left, and the list of available targets is dwindling. Living in Texas the past 5 years, I’ve learned that the Winter is a good time for Mexican vagrants to show up along the southern b

I hadn’t been home to Colorado in over a month. My flight from San Jose to Denver on Southwest Airlines arrived at 1 AM on Monday, November 13, 2023. The next shuttle to Fort Collins was not until 5 AM so it would be another uncomfortable night in an airport. I had time to check my status in the competition categories that are tracked in eBird and ponder my next moves.   My primary competition category is USA and Territories. Marshall Iliff had told me that his team of eBird programmers would eventually create this category but that it would not happen soon. So I couldn’t track my progress in that category compared to other eBird users but I think it is safe to assume that I was at the top of the ranking by at least 25 species. My species count of 824 was well on my way to my goal of 900    species for my “Biggest Year”. I still had trips to American Somoa and the Mariana’s (Guam, Saipan, Rota, etc) planned for December. I had pushed these trips back from October to enable accompanimen

Pelagics and me—we don’t mix well. We are like fish-oil and water. It all started when I was 17 and got very seasick off Cape Hatteras. As you will see in this chapter, my issues with pelagic boat rides continue. I arrived at Fort Lauderdale Airport at about 11 PM on Thursday, November 10, 2023. Beto Matheus had reserved a 21-foot boat from his boat club for Saturday morning, November 12.    Based on his experience taking the boat out just a few miles offshore from West Palm Beach earlier in the year, he expected to find some decent pelagic species. My target species were Cory’s Shearwater, Audubon’s Shearwater, Black-capped Petrel and Band-rumped Storm-Petrel.  My early arrival gave me an extra day to chase any rarities that may have been discovered in Florida. In fact, a Fork-tailed Flycatcher had just been discovered near Panama City Beach. Unfortunately, the distance was too great for a 1-day road trip. Beto texted me to say that he had also reserved a boat for Friday, as he had th

I spent all day Monday, October 30, 2023, at Tres Rios Overbank, an impressive riparian preserve   in Maricopa County, on the outskirts of  Phoenix, Arizona. Equally impressive was the cloud of mosquitoes that chased me away from the site at the end of the day. The Northern Jacana had moved on from its favorite patch of water cress. Consolation for missing another staked-out target vagrant was a Brown Pelican (rare in eBird) loafing on a sand bar with     cormorants on the principal water retention pond near the entrance to the facility.   I left Tres Rios about 6 PM and began my long 2000-mile journey. My next destination was Big Bend National Park in Texas. Nolan Walker, a young birding guide from Arizona, had stumbled upon a Nutting’s Flycatcher at the Santa Elena Canyon Overlook along the Rio Grande River a couple weeks earlier and it was being reported almost daily. Most of the observations were from the morning when it would vocalize. I would have liked to get there early the fol

Kathy Kay and I made a valiant effort to chase the Garganey at Arcata Marsh on Thursday, October 26, 2023. The Garganey, a small duck that had strayed from Asia, didn’t show but Kathy picked out a drake Eurasian Wigeon among the many hundreds of waterfowl present. On Friday, October 27, 2023, we tried to chase another Asian vagrant, Common Greenshank, without success.  This is a large sandpiper similar to our Greater Yellowlegs, but with greenish legs.   A close encounter with a Barred Owl was a consolation for missing the Greenshank. We arrived at the harbor at Half Moon Bay at 6 AM Saturday, October 28, 2023, in plenty of time to board Alvaro Jaramillo’s organized pelagic. I was looking forward to meeting Alvaro for the first time but it turned out he was guiding in Chile or somewhere. Instead he had arranged for several experts in sea bird identification to accompany us and serve as leaders for the group of 20+ birders. Among the experts were Steve Howell and Peter Pyle, both publis

I arrived in Kawaii for the second time quite late on the evening of Monday, October 23, 2023. I used my hotels.com app to find lodging. I was disappointed to learn that the cheapest hotel available was $300 per night (the Kauai Inn). Fortunately, it was just minutes from the Airport. I reserved for two nights.   I was up and out on the road before sunrise on Tuesday, October 24, 2023. I headed to Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge where Red-tailed Tropicbird was being seen daily. During my 4.5-hour visit, I was able to secure a few brief distant views of a tropicbird with entirely white wings flying out over the ocean from the cliff overlook.    No photo, no witness. Not very satisfying. But it counted for my USA and Territories list as bird number 813. Later that afternoon I met up with Adrian Burke across the island. He showed me his favorite sea watch spot at the Port Allen airstrip. He was able to observe a couple of Newell’s Shearwater in fading sunlight that I didn’t see.  O

I arrived in Kona for the third time on the evening flight from Lihue (Kauai) on Friday, October 20, 2023. I rented a high clearance pickup truck for three days. I figured I would need it to drive the four-mile dirt road to the Palila Discovery Forest on the flank of the Mauna Kea volcano. The Palila, a critically endangered endemic finch, was one of my principle targets. A sign at the entrance to the access road reads “4WD vehicles only”. The other targets for this visit to the Big Island were seabirds. I had signed up for pelagic boat trips on Saturday and Sunday. Four petrel species had been reported to eBird recently that would be new for my Biggest Year quest: Black-winged, Cook’s, Mottled and Bulwer’s Petrels. I found my rented apartment quickly just 20 minutes from the airport and 10 minutes from Kona harbor where the boats  are docked. I went straight to bed as I wanted to be fully rested for Lance Tanino’s half day trip the next morning. I woke up Saturday, October 21, 2023, a

Kauai is the oldest of the seven volcanic Hawaiian islands. The islands were formed from an underwater volcano that erupted seven times. Shifting continental plates pushed the nascent islands   away from the underwater volcano over time. Each eruption formed a new island in the archipelago. Because each island is of a different age, it’s geography is quite distinct from the others. Kauai has jagged mountains that are too steep to support agriculture or human settlement   and although they suffer from erosion, these remote ecosystems serve as a refuge for the sensitive endemic species of flora and fauna. Unfortunately conservation biologists have not found sustainable ways to prevent the proliferation of avian malaria and other bird-threatening plagues such as predation from introduced rats and mongoose. The numbers of most endemic species of birds on Kauai continue to diminish. Breeding seabirds which use burrows on mountainsides for raising their young are also threatened by the intro

On Monday, October 16, 2023, Bill Kaempfer, John Vanderpoel and I got an early start, driving for an hour to our meeting spot with Jack Jeffrey, a retired USFWS biologist who worked on conservation of Hawaii’s endemic honeycreepers. In retirement, he has a reputation as the premier photographer of Hawaii’s endemic birds. His photographs have appeared in many high quality publications including several of his own books on Hawaiian birds. He also is one of a small handful of guides who are licensed to take clients into the restricted Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. We hired him to show us the full suite of endemics that the forest had to offer. Jack’s unique experience working on the forest conservation project for decades makes him much more than a birding guide. He is a veritable fountain of valuable information. He is also one of the wittiest people I have ever met. Expect almost   every other sentence from him to contain a pun, witticism or joke.   We met Jack at the rendezv

On my fourth day of birding in the State of Hawaii (Sunday, October 15, 2023), I joined an organized tour on the island of Oahu, led by birding guide Mandy Talpas. To accomplish this, Bill Kaempfer dropped me at Kona airport at 5:00 AM. The commuter flight took off on time at 6:00 AM for a 45-minute flight to Honolulu, Hawaii’s capital city on the island of Oahu. An airport taxi took me to Waikiki Beach where I met the guide and her three other customers at 7:15 AM. I saw several White Tern (USA and Territories Biggest Year-bird number 793) from the taxi. The first stop of the birding tour was a large tree on a city boulevard where several pairs of these beautiful white birds were nesting and frolicking in the air over traffic like fairies. The second stop of the tour was a tropical forest. The lush rainforest vegetation was impressive but Mandy explained to us that none of it was native to Hawaii.     Here we found many Warbling White-eye, Red-billed Leiothrix, White-rumped Shama (794

After spending the night on the floor in the Portland Oregon Airport, I arrived in Maui early in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 11, 2023. I had a half hour break before my commuter flight to Kona on the island of Hawaii so I walked around the Maui airport parking lot   counting birds for an eBird checklist. The only native species I encountered was Pacific Golden-Plover. The rest were exotic (introduced) species, including House Sparrow, Red Junglefowl, Common Myna and Scaly-breasted Munia. Only Zebra Dove (USA and Territories Biggest Year-Bird number 764) was new for the list. At the airport in Kona, I added two more exotic species: Spotted Dove (765) and Warbling White-eye (766).  Bill Kaempfer and John Vanderpoel picked me up at the Kona airport and brought me to our house overlooking Kona, where I added  Java Sparrow (767) and Saffron Finch (768).   I have known Bill and John for years from the Colorado birding community.    Bill was president of Colorado Field Ornithologists 

My road trip to Arizona had to be delayed a day because of the flight I missed on October 1 from Miami to Denver. So Maribel and I packed up our Honda CRV with munchies and headed south towards Phoenix, AZ, late in the day on October 2, 2023. For the past several years we have made it a family tradition to play in a father-son baseball tournament on the beautifully manicured fields and stadiums of the Cactus League, used by the Major League teams during Spring training.     This year, I would use this trip as an opportunity to add a few more bird species to my Biggest Year list! Before leaving Fort Collins, we stopped at JJ’s Corner to fill up with fuel and fill the tires with air. One of the tires was low. Then we stopped in Frederick, CO, to see my daughter Angela and her husband Asher, who were not attending the tournament this year. They are expecting our first grandchild in April! We had not even passed Denver when we felt too tired to continue so we stopped for the night. The che