DENVER BIRDING CLUB IS HOPING 2018 IS A BIG YEAR
A Denver birding club is trying to see as many species as it can in 2018
Drive to a birding hotspot around Denver and you’re likely to spot a magpie or a red-tailed hawk before you even get to the parking lot. Check. Head to the mountains and you’ll probably hear a blue-and-black Steller’s jay making a ruckus in the evergreens. Check.
But if you’re going for what birders call a big year — aiming to see or hear as many species of birds as you can in one calendar year — you can’t just tick the easy birds off your list. You have to see the surf scoter, a sharplooking black seaduck that’s rare in Colorado but can be seen on lakes in the high country in late fall.
And if you’re going for a big year as a collective, which is what one group of Denver birding enthusiasts is doing in 2018, you have to make sure you’ve planned a trip that includes the scoter. Check.
“Who thought that birding involved strategy?” said Chuck Hundertmark, president of Denver Field Ornithologists, with a laugh. “You’re going to see robins. You’re definitely going to get the collared doves.”
But seeing the scoter, and other less-common birds, requires planning, he said.
DFO is chasing a group big year, which coincides with the Year of the Bird. The year-long initiative by the National Audubon Society, National Geographic, BirdLife International and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology marks the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which protects hundreds of migrating birds and their eggs and nests.
A big year is a pursuit usually left to individuals who are driven to see or hear as many different species of birds across North America in one calendar year as they can. DFO’s big year is different — they’ll only count species seen in Colorado, and only on the group’s field trips. If an individual
“It really is a fantastic way to see places you would never otherwise go, and it’s also a fantastic way to connect with the wild earth that’s around us.”
Mark Obmascik, author of “The Big Year” and former Denver Post reporter
in DFO spots an unusual bird on their own, it doesn’t count toward the total.
“It’s really just a way to take advantage of the knowledge the birders have in DFO of where birds occur in Colorado, and when — how to put yourself in the right place at the right time of the year to see rare migrant birds,” said David Suddjian, a DFO trip leader who brought the idea to the group. He’d done a similar group big year with the Santa Cruz Bird Club when he lived in California.
For birders to hit the ground running on Jan. 1, the field trip leaders had to plan ahead. They met back in November to suss out when and where to schedule trips to maximize the number of species they could see. By the end of the year, they expect to run trips into all four corners of the state and plenty of places in between. “It’s actually very complicated, because Colorado’s a big place and there’s a lot of different birds,” Suddjian said.
The Colorado Bird Records Committee of the Colorado Field Ornithologists lists 501 official species in Colorado. It’s hard to say how many birds DFO can spot (or hear, which also counts) as a group, Suddjian said. “You can’t compare it to what an individual would do.” But he still tried at a calculation: 100 percent of the “code 1” birds, the regular species found here; most of the code 2 birds, which are widespread but are seen in lower densities, according to the American Birding Association; 30 percent of Colorado’s code-3 birds, which the ABA defines as “species that occur in very low numbers, but annually.”
And then there are the code-4 birds, which don’t even come to Colorado every year. “The code 4’s are the rare ones you can’t totally predict, and some of them are really, really rare,” Suddjian said. “But we’ve already seen some.” One of those is the redbreasted sapsucker. “The first one ever in Colorado was found a little bit before the new year,” he said. “We’ve had two trips to see it already.”
Suddjian’s guesstimated calculation for their big year added up to a big number. “I came up with 333 as a goal, which is pretty ambitious for something based on planned field trips,” he said.
Big days are also a tradition in birding, and on the Global Big Day in 2016, a team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology set out at midnight, as the clock brought in May 14, to count as many birds as possible in Colorado. They saw or heard 232 species in their 24hour push, breaking the previous state big-day record.
“Historically and culturally, the big year tends to be an individual achievement, and big days tend to be group achievements,” said Ted Floyd, the Coloradobased editor of Birding magazine. While individual birders keeping up a manic pace can put up big numbers over a year, Floyd said groups can spot a lot of species, too. “All things considered, the more people looking for birds, the more birds that are going to be seen.”
The American Birding Association sets ground rules for big years. Beyond that, Floyd said, “This is going to sound so idealistic, but birders just play by this honor system.”
Floyd noted that doing a big year can be a grind, because you have to go out when the weather isn’t great, and sometimes, you don’t see the bird you wanted to see. That said, the camaraderie is nice in those situations. “I can think of so-called chases when we didn’t see the bird,” he said. “And you talk and laugh and have a good time.”
A year is a long time to pursue a goal, but there are waypoints for the birders, such as the spring migration in May, which will bring an influx of exciting new birds to the state. Hundertmark thinks the goal itself will help the birders keep going, though. “I think right about the time that interest starts to get slow will be right about at the end of the year, and we’ll be like, ‘well, will we reach 300, or will we reach 350?’ ”
Mark Obmascik, a former Denver Post reporter and the author of “The Big Year,” a nonfiction book that became a movie by the same name starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson, took a reporter’s phone call for this story as he was birding in City Park. “The great thing about birding is you can do it anywhere,” he said.
It’s one reason why people do big years in many ways, from limiting themselves to a single city or county to those who travel the entire world. “There’s people who go whole hog and spare no expense,” Obmascik said. “They’ll go to Nome (Alaska) at the drop of a hat if a good bird is reported there. Some birders have done similarly fantastic years on their bikes.”
“It really is a fantastic way to see places you would never otherwise go, and it’s also a fantastic way to connect with the wild earth that’s around us,” Obmascik said. “Migration is one of the great natural phenomenons that’s hidden in plain sight.”