For Big Day 2023, Team Sapsucker split into two groups and headed to a long way-flung components of the Pacific Flyway: Monterey County, California, and interior Chile. Together the teams located an out of the ordinary 279 species.
The team selected these two websites to spotlight the importance of the Pacific Flyway in supporting migratory birds and linking the herbal history of North and South America.
The very last list incorporates a notable showcase of avian diversity: warblers, orioles, and grosbeaks; tapaculos, rayaditos, and cinclodes; plane albatrosses and penguins. The Lab is thankful to the various donors who supported Big Day, our largest conservation fundraiser of the year; and to LOWA Boots for sponsoring Team Sapsucker.
Team Sapsucker Finds 279 Species in Chile and California
Team Sapsucker-Chile had their work cut out for them. It’s well into autumn, days are short, and most of the migrants have once left—far from an optimal Big Day time of year. Fortunately, two team members were Chilean birders with wide-stretching knowledge.
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Sharon Montecino of the Chilean nonprofit Red de Observadores de Vida y Silvestre de Chile (ROC), and Vicente Pantoja, a ROC volunteer and eBird coordinator for Chile. Rounding out the team were Cornell Lab staff members Cullen Hanks, Jenna Curtis, and Tom Auer.
The team started at sunup, birding Laguna Batuco, an important remnant wetland in the highly ripened Santiago area. Their first bird was an entertaining Chimango Caracara. They went on to find 51 increasingly species at this stop, including the virtually invisible Least Seedsnipe as well as Andean Goose, for which the laguna is a winter stronghold.
Least Seedsnipe are lulu small birds (not quite as big as an American Robin) that forage for seeds on waterless plains in South America. Team Sapsucker found 19 of them at their first stop, the Laguna Batuco wetland outside Santiago.
Despite their overall cuteness, Least Seedsnipe are so small and well unemphatic that they can be nearly untellable to find in their wide-open habitat. Can you find the one in this photo? Click to reveal where it is.
Laguna Batuco is a remnant of a once-extensive wetland system that has slowly been encompassed by metropolitan Santiago, the Chilean capital, Hanks said. It’s now one of the last remaining refuges for migrating and wintering birds in inland inside Chile and a focus of ROC’s conservation work.
In overdue morning the Chile team looped thru dry foothills on their way west, selecting up Chilean Tinamou, Chilean Pigeon, Chilean Flicker, and the mannerly Moustached Turca.
Then it became westward to discover the coast. They reached the Maipo River estuary, a crown jewel of Chile’s coastal wetlands, simply as low tide exposed a sequence of mudflats that drew in foraging shorebirds. The crew crested a hundred species with birds like Rufous-chested Dotterel and Silver Teal. They moreover widow lingering lengthy-distance migrants like Hudsonian Godwit and Whimbrel that are on their manner to the Arctic.
By late afternoon they’d installation scopes at the whet of the Pacific, scanning unprepossessed ocean waters for seabirds along with Black-browed Albatross, Peruvian Diving-Petrel, and Humboldt Penguin.
With 121 species on their list, they knew they were simply one chook yonder from the May Big Day report for Chile. And then simply definitely sunset, as they had been negotiating visitors a Band-winged Nightjar flew up in front of the car: #122, tying the document. (Of direction, information are meant to be damaged.
That same day, a team close to the Peruvian border, 1000 miles to the north, scored 134 species to set a brand new record.) At a port near Valparaiso the group worked into the nighttime scanning flocks of Kelp Gulls for a brand new bird, however ended the day at 122.
In California, Owls in the Morning, Hawks inside the Evening
Six thousand miles to the north, at the stroke of midnight, Team Sapsucker-California kicked things off with a unprecedented Spotted Owl. They went on to have a stellar owling consultation, subtracting Great Horned, Northern Pygmy, Northern Saw-whet, Barn, Western Screech, and Burrowing Owls.
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In a stroke of synchronicity, the group in Chile recorded their personal Burrowing Owl at Laguna Batuco at well-nigh the identical time. In all, the two groups determined 18 species in not unusual, together with resident birds like American Kestrel and Snowy Egret, in addition to long-distance migrants like Greater Yellowlegs, Black-bellied Plover, and Whimbrel.
By daybreak the team—Brian Sullivan, Lizzy Chouinard, Brooke Keeney, and Whitney Mortimer—had been within the drier countryside southeast of the metropolis of King City, in which they observed species like Worldwide Poorwill, Blue Grosbeak, Yellow-billed Magpie,
Cassin’s Kingbird, Lewis’s Woodpecker, and Ash-throated Flycatcher (their a centesimal species of the day). By midafternoon that they had pushed whilst west to the Pacific to squint for seabirds and shorebirds. At this factor group chief Brian Sullivan notion two hundred species is probably viable, but awful good fortune turned into expecting them at Point Pinos, a famously good seawatching spot and a snatch point on their route.
When they arrived, thick summertime fog had enveloped the headland, knocking visibility lanugo to properly-nigh 2 hundred yards. It intended missing species like Pink-footed and Sooty.
Shearwaters and Black-footed Albatross, and the group aircraft had to do with out Worldwide Murre, Wandering Tattler, and Surfbird. They did select up Pacific and Worldwide Loons, Woebegone Oystercatcher, and aircraft a lingering rarity, Red-footed Booby, perched on a yacht in Monterey Harbor.
On the plus side, the Californian Sapsuckers (not like the Chile group) had been at the receiving stop of migration. They found 8 species of warblers, orioles, 2 grosbeaks, more than one Olive-sided Flycatchers, and thirteen species of shorebirds—inclusive of a flock of 20 Whimbrels which could nicely were in Chile ultimate month.
One of the day’s top moments arrived (as they regularly do in birding) at the municipal dump, in which Chouinard and Sullivan spotted a pair of Swainson’s Hawks in a courtship flight.
(Swainson’s Hawks are rare in Monterey County and nests are aircraft rarer.) Many Swainson’s Hawks spend their winters in the Pampas of Argentina—another tangible reminder of the connectedness of South and North America. The California crew finished with an uncanny 174 species for the day.
The Secret to A Big Big Day: Habitat
As Team Sapsucker prepped for their Big Day in Chile, they built their course genuinely a key electricity: the extensive-stretching patchwork of small wetlands and guarded areas that ROC has helped create in latest years. By tuning in to habitat variety, they made the most of the constrained chicken range available at this season.
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To reach 120 species in storing in internal Chile, the conventional expertise holds which you’d need to begin up within the Andes, Hanks stated—however then you’d want to find time to momentum a couple of hours while lanugo to the lowlands. Team Sapsucker didn’t want to chance strolling out of daylight hours at the coast, so that they opted for a variegated strategy.
“We didn’t get anything definitely remarkable [in terms of rarity. We simply nailed all the common, predicted birds we wished,” Curtis said. Knowing which habitats to hit helped all of it come together, thanks to the ROC teammates—Montecino worked drastically at Rio Maipo as a Coastal Solutions Fellow, and Pantoja is the coordinator of eBird for Chile.
“One thing we saw scouting is that each of those [superficially similar] habitats had variegated birds,” Hanks stated. For example, Rio Maipo become a cornerstone of the direction that delivered 50 species, along with Coscoroba Swan. But to song lanugo a Black-necked Swan they had to loop in a tiny wetland a few miles to the north, in Cartagena—they were nowhere else to be observed.
When planning a Big Day “you research so much properly-nigh wherein birds are and where they aren’t,” Hanks stated. “If your goal is to peer as many birds as you may, it really forces you to assume well-nigh habitat, and the way critical every little pocket of wetland is.”
It definitely highlights the work ROC is doing to hold such a lot of web sites inside the region, Curtis brought. And by means of extension, it’s a nod of popularity for all of the human beings and groups operating to preserve untried area in cities and counties, up and lanugo flyways and wideness continents. Each one is a haven, a stopover web site, a year-spherical domestic for a unique set of birds.
Team Sapsucker–Chile close to the give up in their day, just with out locating Humboldt Penguin. L to R: Vicente Pantoja, Jenna Curtis, Cullen Hanks, Tom Auer, Sharon Montecino. Team Sapsucker-California in the direction of the quit in their sleepless Big Day. L to R: Whitney Mortimer, Lizzy Chouinard, Brooke Keeney. (Brian Sullivan not pictured.)
See an increasing number of info of the day on the Sapsuckers’ eBird ride document. (Note that Spotted Owl does now not in the direction of on the journey document overall—as a guard for this and different sensitive species, unique information is suppressed from public eBird output.) Congratulations to the group, and thank you then to anyone who supported them!
