My Birding World

Day 1: January 1, 2026
Total Species Recorded: 7

After months of anticipation, 2026 is finally here! I decided to pursue a personal Big Recording Year in 2026 with a goal of recording 100 species. The recordings will only count if I upload them to eBird, and the files will be added to a growing database of sound media used for research. Not only am I giving myself a fun challenge for the year, I’m also contributing data that benefits birds.

Typically on New Year’s Day, I participate in a friendly competition with family to see who can spot the most number of birds in a single day. Those plans were dashed by unfavorable weather this year, so I focused on recordings rather than running around looking for as many birds as possible. It resulted in a calmer, more introspective day, replacing the adrenaline rush that comes with scurrying all over to get a glimpse of all the birds.

I anticipated rain today, but instead we got wind. I’m using a small microphone with a windshield to help block some of the wind sound, but it was no match for the wind that whipped through the fields today. While it would be nice to produce the “perfect” recording, I find it more important to capture an accurate call or song no matter the conditions, better reflecting the true situation.

I was more aware of various unnatural noises that may impact the recordings, such as jackets rustling, distant traffic on the freeway, or the idling car when recording during a driving-based list. These are all things that we might naturally tune out while birding, but are readily picked up by the microphone. It seems like it will be nearly impossible to find conditions where there isn’t wind or other unwanted noises, but that’s also the nature of the type of birding many of us experience and, it is worth capturing.

My favorite recording of the day was a Wood Duck call. I’m familiar with their Ooo-Wee! Ooo-Wee! call that I associate with the ducks taking flight, but the vocalization I captured this time sounded like a soft, buzzy zipper, and I almost mistook it for a Pine Siskin. Later that morning, another similarly high-pitched and whiny call made me think I was hearing an odd chicken sound, but it was a different Wood Duck! These are the learning moments I’m looking forward to with this challenge and hope that I’ll gain a more intimate understanding of various bird vocalizations.

At the end of Day 1 of this challenge, I uploaded seven recordings to two eBird lists. I have 364 days to capture 93 more recordings!

To read more posts about this challenge, see the dedicated Bird Recording Challenge 2026 web page or click on “Bird Recording Challenge 2026” under “Tags” at the bottom of this post.

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!