Big Birding Day 2020

Contributed by Heather Stalberg

Midnight! Ready, set, go! Six hours later I was out the door.

This was the Kamloops Naturalist Club’s Big Birding Day, a much-anticipated annual spring event starting on a Saturday at midnight and ending at 4:00 pm the following Sunday. Birders spread out over a geographic area bounded by a 50 km radius extending from the tower on Mount Dufferin. Teams are divided into South and North using the South Thompson and Thompson Rivers as a dividing line. There are three simple objectives: win, win, win; the team with the highest number of species being the winner.

This year’s May 24^th event saw a different approach to the day with measures implemented to mitigate the risk of COVID-19; this included using various methods to report results instead of the traditional gathering where gloating can be done in-person. All adjusted readily, ensuring it continued to be fun.

The 19 participants on Team South, broken into 13 sub-teams, birded areas from the Thompson/S. Thompson Rivers e.g., Mission Flats, the sewage treatment lagoons, and Pioneer Park; up through urbanized parts of the city including Albert McGowan Park; many lakes south of Kamloops e.g., Goose, Edith, Separation, Stump and Roche; to the mountaintops of Greenstone and Chuwells; and many routes in-between e.g., Rosehill, Long Lake, Duck Range, Campbell Range, and Robbins Range.

Team South’s efforts garnered some notables: Least Flycatcher (sparsely scattered), Common Goldeneye (rare at this time of year), Rough-legged Hawk (rare at this time of year), Red-eyed Vireo, Black Swift (less frequently seen in recent years), and White-fronted Goose (uncommon anytime). Northern Flicker, American Crow and Tree Swallow were the species seen by the most sub-teams.

Team North had 14 participants, and their eight sub-teams covered a lot of terrain, including: Tranquille, Cinnamon Ridge, Westsyde, Lac du Bois, Saul Lake/Red Lake backroads, Paul Lake Road and Pinantan area, Heffley Lake to Sun Peaks, McArthur Island, and Shuswap Road from Kamloops to Chase. Phew. Northern notables were Eurasian Wigeon (rare at this time of year) and Trumpeter Swan (rare at this time of year).  Species seen by the most sub-teams were American Crow and European Starling.

Also, when combined, Teams South and North reported: three species of hummingbirds: black-chinned, Rufous and Calliope; six species of owls:  Flammulated, Great Horned, Barred, Great Gray, and Northern Saw-whet; plus a multitude of warblers.   

And, yes! The winner was Team South with 141 species, beating out their competitor’s 137. There was a total of 161 species reported between the two teams. Well done.   

Looking to set-out a bit earlier next year, Heather Stalberg.

The spreadsheet of full results is here – Big bird spreadsheet