Planning the End Game

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 accompaniment. My brother Oliver would join me in American Samoa in mid-December. My son Nick would join me in the Marianas in late December. I expected to collect 60 new species in the South Pacific. The remaining species needed would have to be collected from Hawaii, Alaska, the lower 48 states and the other USA territories (Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands). Unfortunately the northwest chain of islands in Hawaii, such as Midway, Laysan, Nihoa, and the minor outlying islands (including Wake Atoll) were off-limits, inaccessible to me. I needed a plan to find at least 16 more species. Opportunities to chase vagrants would be limited with the dwindling number of available travel days remaining during the busy Holiday season. I should focus on visiting locations where multiple resident species can be expected, rather than rely on vagrants to cooperate during the narrow time frames and geographic spaces that I would be able to visit for staked-out birds. 

I also wanted to consider secondary priorities. For the ABA Area and the ABA Continental competitions, I was around 20 species behind David and Tammy McQuade in both competitions. With limited days available for chasing vagrants, and based on my recent whiffs (unsuccessful chases of Garganey, Common Greenshank, Northern Jacana, Yellow Rail) I didn’t think this gap could be overcome.  So a possible 3-day trip to Nome to pick up McKay’s Bunting, Spectacled Eider and Gyrfalcon was probably not in the cards. 

The Lower 48 competition was different. I was also in third place, about twelve species behind the McQuades. Twelve species was a gap that I could overcome, especially considering that several species that I had already seen in Alaska and Hawaii could be

added to my lower 48 list if I also observed them in the contiguous mainland states. Species in this category that were still possible to find for the lower 48 competition included Rock Sandpiper, Bar-tailed Godwit, Red-necked Stint, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Gray-crowned Rosy Finch, Slaty-backed Gull, Ross’s Gull and King Eider. I could probably knock off two or three of these while chasing new rarities. 

Puerto Rico was the destination with the most birds I could add to my Big Year list. A dozen possible new species there included Masked Duck, Ruddy Quail-Dove, Scarlet Ibis, Connecticut Warbler, Red-billed Tropicbird, Audubon’s Shearwater, Cory’s Shearwater, Black-capped Petrel, Orange-fronted Parakeet, White Cockatoo, Yellow-crowned Bishop and Lesser Antillean Bullfinch. Of course I would be lucky to score four of these during another trip to the Isla del Encanto. I made plans to visit November 29-December 3.  

Massachusetts also held a decent list of potential Year Birds. I came up with eight possibles: Pink-footed Goose, Dovekie, Razorbill, Cory’s Shearwater, Little Gull, Great Skua, Gyrfalcon, Leach’s Storm-Petrel. 

I made plans to spend two days in Massachusetts November 27 and 28. I’d be lucky to score two of these. 

Texas still offered a few opportunities. Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, Yellow Rail,  and Cattle Tyrant was just discovered near the shipping port in Corpus Christie. This first state record was probably a ship assisted bird. My brother Oliver suggested that it might have boarded a cargo ship in the Panama Canal. I made plans to visit Austin TX for 36 hours,  November 17-18.  My son Nick would drive me to the coast (Corpus Christie area) and possibly also to the Rio Grande Valley if we could get access to the Santa Margarita Ranch near Salineño for the tiger-heron. I’d be lucky to get one of these three targets. 

Kansas had a bird that wad low hanging fruit (Smith’s Longspur). I reserved November 15-16 for this road trip with David Wade behind the wheel. On November 14, another fruity species was Black Rosy-Finch reported from Horsetooth Mountain Park just a few miles from my house in Fort Collins. I invited my friend Phil Cafaro to join me on a short hike to find this winter visitor. 

  

Hawaii holds several additional species that I can try to track down  between trips to American Samoa (December 7-13) and The Marianas/Guam (December 17-27). These include three endemics on Maui, several endemic species on Kauai, one endemic species on the Big Island (Palila) and one or two exotic species on each of those islands as well (such as Greater Necklaced Laughing-Thrush on Kauai and Japanese Quail on Hawaii). These birds would count towards my “Biggest Year” and the ABA Area Big Year competition. I will be in Maui anyway Dec 14-16 so I might as well try for some of those species. Also I scheduled a Pelagic off Kona on December 15, which may produce 1 or 2 more species. 

This plan will use up all my birding days through December except for December 4-6 and December 28-31. Also November 19-26 is free but I had agreed to spend the Thanksgiving break with my wife and kids in El Salvador visiting my wife’s family members.  Maribel was already in El Salvador so the house was quiet. Nonetheless I was eager to get out of the house and begin executing my end game plan. 

On November 14, 2023, Phil and I whiffed trying to find Black Rosy-Finch. Hopefully the next time I am in Colorado (Dec 4?) it will be snowing. When it snows, flocks of Rosy-Finch come to backyard feeders in Estes Park and other montane towns. They also turn up on the plains where they voraciously  consume roadside sunflower seeds. 

On November 15, I embarked on a two-day thousand-mile loop east to Lincoln (Nebraska), south to Wichita (Kansas), west to Denver, and finally north back to Fort Collins, with my birding friend David Wade in the driver’s seat. We made birding stops on the way in northeast Colorado (at Timnath Reservoir and Jumbo Reservoir) and southwest Nebraska (Lake McConaughy) hoping to stumble upon a Gyrfalcon or Little Gull. No luck finding rare Year Birds but we found plenty of eBird rarities, especially shorebirds that have lingered much further north than normal taking advantage of the mild climate this fall. Rarities included American Golden-Plover, Dunlin, Long-billed Dowitcher and Least Sandpiper at Timnath Reservoir and Baird’s Sandpiper at Jumbo Reservoir. 

The next day, November 16, we visited Spring Creek Prairie Nature Center (in southeast Nebraska) hoping for Smith’s Longspur. Again, whiff. We finally found gold at the end of the rainbow at a hay field in eastern Kansas called “Smith’s Longspur field” in eBird. Smith Longspur (USA and Territories Big Year-Bird number 825)  have a very limited range in North America. Their core breeding area in northwest Canada and wintering area in the central plains states occupy a fairly narrow swath of long grass prairie habitat. Ironically they prefer patches of short green grass within this ecosystem. 

On Friday, November 16, I flew to Austin, TX, where my son Nick picked me up at noon. We bee-lined to Corpus Christie where we added the vagrant Cattle Tyrant (826). The next morning; we could not get access to the Santa Margarita Ranch to look for the Bare-throated Tiger-Heron. Instead we visited San Bernardo National Wildlife Refuge where we whiffed on Yellow Rail, which is a strong candidate for worst nemesis bird of the year. Nick dropped me off at the airport and I flew back to Denver. I stayed with my daughter Angela in Frederick, CO, and the next morning she and her husband Asher and I took a flight to Dallas where we met Nick and flew on to San Salvador for a well-deserved vacation from my Biggest Year project. Of course, Nick and I birded daily in El Salvador, spotting about 180

species. 

We returned home to Colorado on Sunday, November 26. I was ready to continue my sprint to the finish line. Asher’s mother, Tammara, picked us up at the airport and dropped us at Angela and Asher’s house in Frederick, CO. I borrowed Angela’s car and drove an hour to Fort Collins, grabbed a few items that I needed from home, picked up a ready-to-go pizza at Little Caeser’s  an drove another hour back to Angela’s house. She drove me back to the airport where I took a red-eye to Philadelphia, connecting to Boston.

Alf Wilson offered to drive me during my two days of birding in eastern Massachusetts November 27-28. Alf was also with me in Arizona in early August. He picked me up mid-morning on November 27 at Logan Airport. We tooled around Winthrop and Lynn before lunching at a Salvadoran restaurant where Alf tried pupusas for the first time. We spent all afternoon at Cape Ann looking for alcids. No luck. Consolation was a female King Eider at Andrew’s Point (which I needed for my Lower 48 list). On November 28, we continued the search for alcids (specifically Razorbill and Dovekie) as well as shearwaters at Corporation Beach on Cape Cod. Three of my target species had been seen there in recent days (Dovekie, Razorbill and Cory’s  Shearwater). Immediately upon arriving in the morning we spotted dozens of Razorbill (827) but never confirmed any Dovekie. A Cory’s Shearwater photographed the day before was a no-show this day. Remarkably a different, dark-plumaged shearwater did pass close to shore and I snapped off some photos. The underwing pattern seemed to support an identification as Sooty Shearwater whereas the bird seemed to be structured more like a Short-tailed Shearwater. Either one would be considered a vagrant in Massachusetts in late November. Another noteworthy bird there was Pacific Loon. Unfortunately neither was new for my quest. The following morning, Alf and I met at Logan Airport and traveled to Puerto Rico for the next chapter of the end game.