Time starts to fly this time of the year. Holidays come at us with blinding speed – when one ends, another is peering around the corner. Appointments, projects, and commitments get squeezed into the remaining months of the year. Before you know it, a new year is upon us, hopefully providing a much-needed reset from the flurry of activities.

For me, the new year brings new opportunities for birding. I like to set goals to drive new life into birding activities, and to hopefully learn a bit more along the way.

Some birders like to pursue a Big Year where they tally up as many bird species as possible during an entire year. I participated in a county Big Year competition in 2023 – a thrilling and exhausting experience that I will honestly be hesitant to repeat. This year, my goal is to do an individual Big Year by competing with myself, but the rules will be a bit different. I plan to do a Big Recording Year.

I’ve become more interested in recording bird vocalizations since lugging a heavy camera around for photography can be cumbersome. I have a lightweight microphone that plugs into my cellphone and is easy to deploy. It’s been particularly useful in areas where a visual on a bird is difficult and vocal IDs are the main focus, such as in the mountains with the birds hanging out at the tops of the towering trees.

Recording birds also doesn’t have the same popularity as photography, meaning that my recordings will be that valuable for research. Each recording attached to an eBird checklist will be automatically added to the Macaulay Library collection.

My goal is to record 100 bird species during 2026. I did a quick run through of the birds I’ve seen this year and estimated that 98 species could be reasonably recorded, although by no means a guarantee. So theoretically 100 should give me a gentle challenge.

Some advanced planning will help with tackling this goal. Identifying a list of target birds and when they are present in my home town will be a good first step. I’ll want to first tackle birds that are more difficult to get. For example I can record the California Scrub-Jays and Anna’s Hummingbirds in my backyard year-round on any given day, but the window to record a Bullock’s Oriole will be during spring migration and when it sings its heart out to attract a mate. The summer is usually quiet and too hot to go out birding, so I will need to account for that.

There’s a lot to do before the year comes to a close, but I’m looking forward to this year-long goal!