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

Back at home I checked my 2023 list totals on a spreadsheet on my laptop. I had missed a few species. My total was 891 species for the USA and Territories, 9 species short of my goal of 900. I noticed that my World life list in eBird had increased by 111 species. Eleven of these I had seen previously but had never been included on any checklist I submitted to eBird before 2023. So 100 species were true life birds for me. I assessed the value added by visiting each of the outlying regions beyond the Lower 48 states (see Table 1). All the regions were valuable. Within the lower 48 states, I visited Texas the most (7 times) followed by Florida (6 times), California (5 times) and Arizona (4 times). Table 1. Value added (in terms of year birds and life birds) among the outlying regions visited in 2023.  Region     Birding Days Year-Birds Life-Birds  Alaska              14                 ...

With three days to go in the ABA Area Big Year competition, I was still in fourth place, and still six birds behind Gino Ellison who was still picking up species in Arizona and California. Nonetheless I would try to maximize my species number, and photograph species that I had not yet photographed. There were four vagrants on winter territories in the lower Rio Grande Valley that I needed to see for my year list: Gray-collared Becard in Brownsville, Crimson-collared Grosbeak in Weslaco, Bare-throated Tiger-Heron and Mottled Owl at Santa Margarita Ranch near Roma, Texas. My friend EJ Raynor was already in Brownsville when I arrived in San Antonio close to 1 AM on Friday, December 29, 2023. I figured I would rent a car at the airport, find a cheap hotel, then drive four hours to Weslaco for the grosbeak and meet EJ in Brownsville at the end of the day. The following evening we had reserved a guided hike at Santa Margarita Ranch in hopes of hearing nocturnal species, including a res...

As I prepared to return to the US mainland, I checked the eBird standings for ABA Area, ABA Continental and Lower 48 using the Explore tab in eBird.org and then clicking on Top 100 and selecting among the list for Major Regions. Some day I hope to see USA and Territories included in the list of Major Regions but I will have to be patient. While I was vacationing in the South Pacific, Gino Ellison was diligently working on adding new species to his Lower 48 list, and had moved into third place in all three lists by 6 species. David and Tammy McQuade had also increased their ABA area totals and were firmly out of reach, occupying first and second place. I would have to work hard and efficiently to catch Gino, and hope that he had hung up his binoculars for the final week of competition. The number of possible adds for my ABA area list were quite limited. These included 5 species in Texas, 3 species in California, a couple of vagrant waterfowl in the northeast, and one or two pelagic ...

We returned to Guam on December 26, 2023, after spending our final night in Saipan in style at the Coral Ocean Resort. We had booked the short flight on a United Airlines jet for about $300 each. Before returning our rental car we drove around to the Saipan airport pond for one last attempt to see the Common Greenshank that had been reported there in recent days. We got excited when a shorebird flew in but it turned out to be Wood Sandpiper, the most common sandpiper wintering on the island. United Airlines’ procedures were slow and cumbersome compared to STAR Marianas airline. And because CNMI and Guam are different countries, we needed to go through customs inspections. So the short flight took up much of the morning. My friend Tom Hall, who had accompanied me in Gambell (Alaska) in June, had worked in Guam years ago and he informed his colleagues there of my Biggest Year project. They recommended that I contact Martin Kastner. I emailed him and he responded with some general gu...

[By Nicholas Alexander Komar (Nick Jr.)] We arrived on the island of Rota on December 23rd, 2023. The flight from Saipan took about 30 minutes in a dual-engine jumper plane that fit up to eight passengers (including the pilot). You can really feel the air in a plane that small, which can be troubling considering nothing is in your control. The pilots for S.T.A.R. (Saipan, Tinian, Aguijan, Rota) Marianas Airline have all been young, professional, interesting people. One was a 22-year-old guy from Colorado Springs who studied at the Air Force Academy. Another was a 23-year-old Indian woman who grew up in Maine and had been involved in aviation since she was six years old. I found it fascinating to learn how each of them ended up flying these tiny plans way out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  The birding goal on Rota was to find Mariana Crow, and Rota White-eye. Both critically endangered species endemic to this island. We were given suggestions by locals on how to find both...

  On Friday, December 22, 2023, Nick Jr. and I caught a commuter flight to the island of Tinian, via Star Mariana Airlines.     But first we checked out a couple of spots around the airport on Saipan. The most productive spot was a pond on the golf course at Coral Ocean Resort. Nick Jr. used his charm to convince the resort manager to provide a golf cart free of charge for us to view both ponds on the property. Both ponds have emergent vegetation. The west pond had good birds. Our checklist included Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal, Garganey (USA and Territories Biggest Year-Bird #869), Wood Sandpiper, Black-winged Stilt (870) and Whiskered Tern.   The flight to Tinian was a short 10-minute jaunt in a tiny 4 passenger plane. The pilot was a young man from Colorado. Tinian is a small island but big enough to rent cars at the airport. We rented one and drove to the town harbor where we found Gray-tailed Tattler, a gray mid-sized sandpiper that prefers rocky shorelin...

On Thursday December 21, 2023, Nick Jr. and I returned to the north end of Saipan. It is a small island so we arrived in 20 minutes, just before sunrise. Here we first heard and then saw our target, the Micronesian Megapode, a terrestrial forest bird named for its large feet (Year - Bird number 865).  eBird uses the name Micronesian Scrubfowl. We found a singing Saipan Reed-Warbler (866) near Suicide Cliff.     Then at the nearby landfill we found a good variety of shorebirds at the settling pond: Wood Sandpiper, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper. Eurasian Moorhen was a new Year-Bird     (867). We then birded our way back to the airport at the south end of the island. We were determined to find a better view of the catchment pond. Eventually we found a better viewpoint. We found a Whiskered Tern over the     pond. Not only a year- bird (868) but also a life bird for both of us! We ended our birding day at Garapan Harbor where we located an overw...

  Nick Jr. and I arrived in Saipan early on Wednesday December 20, 2023 on a  United Airlines jet. The trip from Guam was less than an hour. In Saipan, we rented a car from Enterprise (Nick Jr.     drove) and began birding immediately. Nick Jr. had done quite a bit of research at eBird.org and had determined the important hot spots we would need to visit. My list of bird species I considered targets on Saipan was about 20 species long. The top two hotspots were the airport catchment pond and the nearby Coral Ocean Resort. We tried to find the pond but it seemed to be overgrown with weedy vegetation and we could not get decent views of the actual pond. Similarly, a drive by at the resort yielded no useful views. We tried another shorebird hotspot at a golf driving range close to the airport. We entered the parking lot and found no golfers there. I asked permission to walk the perimeter and received it.   We spent an hour there and found no shorebirds or shorebird...

The Mariana’s are a chain of islands stretching northward from Guam. They comprise two US Territories: Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The flight from Honolulu departed at 3:30 PM on December 17, 2023, and arrived about 7.5 hrs later at 7 PM on December 18, 2023, after crossing several time zones and the international Date Line and more than three thousand miles. For U.S. citizens, a passport is not required to enter Guam. However, we did have to go through Customs inspection, which was quick and painless.   I picked up my rental car, drove a few miles to my hotel, checked in, grabbed dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant, strolled along the beach counting shorebirds for my daily eBird checklist, and went to bed. Although shorebirds are often active at night, my count was zero. My first day in the Marianas had passed and my Biggest Year list was still stalled at 849 species On the morning of December 19, 2023, I left the hotel at 6:30 AM, grabbed b...

Expecting to take a pelagic boat trip from Kona, Oliver and I had redirected our flight from Pago Pago to Kona (was originally to Kahului, Maui). We arrived in Kona (on the island of Hawaii) the morning of December 14, 2023, after flying all night to Honolulu. First stop for birding was the Waste Water Treatment Facility near the Kona airport. I hoped to find the wintering Sharp-tailed Sandpiper that I had seen here in October, as Ollie had never seen one. Rare birds here included Pectoral Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, Greater Scaup, all of which were present in October as well.   I reviewed what species had been reported within 50 miles in the last two weeks using the Birds Eye app on my iPhone. The app told me that just one species had been seen nearby that I still needed for my ABA Area year list-Palila! Recall that in October I had roamed the momane forest of the Mauna Kea    volcano for a total of 16 hours looking for Palila. Unfortunately the long standing drought h...

Day 5 was Sunday, December 10, 2023.     We arrived 15 minutes early   to the meeting place at Oasi Harbor, a small but functioning facility built by the US Army Corps of Engineers decades ago. Our boat captain arrived a few minutes later sans boat. He had arranged to use a family member’s 31-foot pontoon boat. However it turned out that the boat was needed to transport materials to the village on Aunu’u, a small island just off the eastern coast of Tutuila.     I was relieved that the boat was postponed as the surf was high and waves were >4 feet high. The boat captain, Peter Taliva’a, invited us to his home in a nearby village for coffee. Peter spoke English fluently and was very knowledgeable about Samoan history and culture. He regularly leads tours of Aunu’u island for cruise ship passengers who dock at the port of Pago Pago.  Peter offered for his deckhand, Mike Levi, to accompany us to Aunu’u for the remainder of the morning, particularly to look ...

Contributed by Oliver Komar Today--Monday, December 11, 2023--was a fairly slow day, but it finished with a bang. We awoke before dawn, but still felt sleep deprived. The plan was to get into the nearby rainforest on the island's central ridge in time for the pre-dawn avian chorus. Early morning rain dampened that plan and we went back to sleep. We would wait out the rain over breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We adapted to the rain, and decided to start the day's activities focusing on logistics, rather than birds. How could we get on a boat to visit the shearwaters, petrels, and storm-petrels that we imagined must be foraging just a few kilometers offshore? Yesterday we could see a handful from the north shore, about half a mile out to sea, maybe more. We stopped at the office of the national marine sanctuary, almost next door to our hotel, to inquire. A very friendly receptionist named Belle was happy to help us figure out a plan. She gave us several contacts, names and num...

Sunday, December 10, 2023, Oliver and I arose early in order to appreciate the dawn chorus in the rainforest. Unfortunately it was raining steadily and all we heard was Eastern Wattled-Honeyeater which seemed to be all around us at Afono Pass (elevation about 1000 feet). We continued on to Afono, a quaint village on the north coast of Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa. An eBird checklist from 4 years earlier had reported three species here that we were still looking for: Polynesian Starling, Many-colored Fruit-Dove and Fiji Shrikebill.     We did not find any of these but the scenery was spectacular.   Next we drove to the east end of Tutuila. The rain had stopped. We found an overlook facing north and tried a sea watch. Bingo! We saw distant Shearwater species, a flyby Gray-backed Tern (USA and Territories Big Year bird number 845). We spent the rest of the day wandering the forest roads of the east end of the island in search of new species. We found a pair at ...

We did not really know what to expect when Oliver and I arrived in American Samoa on the morning of December 8, 2023, after flying all night from Honolulu. Reviewing data on eBird, it appears that no birders live in American Samoa. This US Territory is severely underbirded. In eBird, the bird list for American Samoa is just 62 species, derived from just a few hundred checklists.   And the number   of species reported in December is markedly fewer. Fortunately about half the species present in American Samoa would be new for my Big Year bird list. I hoped to find 20 new species in American Samoa for my quest to observe 900 species in one year.   By the end of our first day I had added 9 new species. And 5 more the second day, bringing my total number of species to 844. We have four more days here before returning to Hawaii on December 14.  Incidentally, the main island of American Samoa where we are staying is called Tutuila, and it is ridiculously gorgeous. The scene...