Big Year 2023

Big Year 2023

Bonaparte's Gull 2023

Bonaparte’s Gull, 2023

I like challenges. I really like year long challenges. It is therefore fitting that every New Year’s Eve, we watch The Big Year to gather up some excitement for the upcoming year. Although I imagine myself competing alongside the movie characters, in real life I often compete with my family to see who can spot the most bird species from January 1 to December 31. So imagine my excitement when San Joaquin Audubon announced that they were sponsoring a County Big Year for 2023! Now I could move from daydreaming about a Big Year to actually doing it alongside many other birders.

Being new to the county would put me at a great disadvantage. In my old town, I knew exactly where to find key birds. I could tell you the exact patch of bramble where the Pacific Wrens hung out in Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. I could predict when a pair of male Black Scoters would arrive at the Richmond Marina during the winter. I had a firm grasp of the various habitats and the birds that might show up each season. But here, I had zero idea of the places to go, let alone having intricate knowledge of the birds’ favorite spots within a hotspot. But I didn’t let that stop me from entering this competition!

To prepare, I signed up for hourly rare bird alerts plus daily eBird needs alerts – a customized list of county birds recently spotted by other birders that you need for the year. I had already joined the San Joaquin Audubon listserv and joined a new WhatsApp group for bird findings. I created pivot tables using eBird data and I poured over bar charts to track seasonality. I arranged my schedule to ensure that I could participate in as many Audubon-sponsored bird walks as possible. And I’ve been out birding every single day, often pivoting my birding plans on a dime to chase after a rarity.

It’s exhausting. Even worse, it’s only been one month! As I tracked the eBird annual top 100 birders for the county, I was feeling like I couldn’t keep up with the locals. Despite access to historical data, it simply doesn’t match intimate knowledge of the area collected from years of experience. It’s one thing to find a park, it’s quite another to know the exact spot in which the bird is found.

One particularly rough day left me in tears. Work pressures, birding pressures, life pressures – it was getting to be too much. If I wasn’t birding, I was working. When I wasn’t working, I was birding. There was no time for chores and I barely squeezed in time to pick up groceries. Why was I doing this? Isn’t this supposed to be fun? Why do I feel so stressed out? Is the stress worth it? I started to seriously question my participation in the Big Year.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” my sister wisely told me one evening. In other words, don’t pressure yourself to see all the birds all at once, which is exactly what I was trying to do. Always one to nudge me on, she encouraged me to think about this as a fun bucket list item. At the end of this year, I will be able to say that I finally lived out a dream of participating in a Big Year and be proud no matter my ranking in the end.

I chewed on this for a while. Whenever I compete, I’m in it to win; but the bucket list mindset alleviates a lot of stress. Yes, I’m still pushing to do my absolute best and hope for an underdog win, but releasing the pressure with a shift in my mindset is proving to be helpful.

As a result of this competition, I’ve been meeting new birders and seeing them every weekend on bird walks. They’ve been kind enough to share tips with us newcomers. Their generosity is something very special that I’ll treasure. If nothing else, I’m happy to have expanded my birding circle and have fun with new birders so far this year.

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