Birding is a culture unto itself, one that I often feel like I'm only on the periphery of. While I consider myself a semi-competent birder, I often find myself saying "I struggle with ____." The blank is often filled with "shorebirds," "hawks," "warblers," or whatever other group with similar characteristics I happen to be looking at. To be honest, I've probably filled that blank with every bird group at some point or another (wrens, woodpeckers, ducks, seriously, the list can go on). I've been fortunate to know only kind birders, who correct my frequent mis-identifications without judgement and patiently describe where exactly on the tree the owl fledgling I am blind to is sitting. Knowing these kinds of birders makes participating in events like the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Counts and Global Big Day for the first time a joy.
A "big day" in birding is a 24 hour period in which birders attempt to identify as many species as possible. This could be undertaken as a personal challenge, a competition, a fundraiser (as LSU ornithology students have done), or as part of a massive, global citizen science effort through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and their eBird platform. After casually participating in October Big Day (a somewhat smaller event than Global Big Day in May) with friends last year, I excitedly started looking for birders to go out with on May 14th. While trying to recruit friends who are not necessarily avid birders, I got asked a couple of times what Big Day is, and at one point a friend interjected with something along the lines of "it's when old birders are mean and competitive."
I wish that friend had been able to join the group I went out with on Big Day. We were mostly graduate students in UW's Ecology program. Two actively study birds and a third studies amphibians but is a very active birder (she tracked down the Steller's Sea Eagle that hung out in New England a few months ago while she was visiting family for the holidays). We were also joined by another nature-minded friend, my not-a-birder partner, and two Iranian friends who had never birded in their lives, but came armed with a camera and open minds.
The beauty of this group was that we had just enough expertise for us to have complete confidence in our identifications, while maintaining the feel of being amateurs. Paul and Mel, our most experienced birders, would identify species at a glance or by song, then spend as much time as needed explaining to the rest of us where we could find the Yellow Warbler or Lazuli Bunting in question. Aynaz and Pourya, who had never birded before, were occasionally overwhelmed trying to spot everything we were pointing at, but we all shared binoculars and cameras until they were able to see the most interesting species. By the end of the morning they were starting to get the hang of things, pointing out movement in the trees and taking pictures of the Great-Horned Owl fledglings as we passed them for a second time.
We recorded over 50 species on Big Day, split between the Green Belt that follows the Laramie River and an urban park known for its ducks (and, on that day, phalaropes!), a pretty impressive day of birding for southeast Wyoming. Several species were lifers for me (first time seeing them, ever!) but the biggest highlight of the day really was seeing two new people introduced to the world of birding by such patient and kind people.
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