Preliminaries: Part 4 (Little Big Year... with apologies to Thomas Berger)

For the past few days I've been thinking of my upcoming big year as a “little big year.” It certainly will be nothing on the scale of an ABA-area big year such as the successful ones documented in blogs by Neil Hayward or Jay Lehman in 2013, Bob Ake in 2010, or others. It won't be as big as a statewide big year, or even as big as a big year in a coastal VA county such as Northampton might be. It will be much smaller in terms of miles traveled, expense, and species seen than any of those. But how big, or little?


As for the number of species I might see, it's hard to say, and I suppose that's another reason I want to do the year. Although I know Prince Edward birds pretty well, I can't say for sure how many species I should see, though I've been trying to come up with some estimate. While eBird reports my total from 2011 as 158 species in the county, that doesn't include some obvious species such as Eastern Screech-Owl. On the other hand, I did see Lesser Black-backed Gull, Sooty Tern, and Royal Tern in the county in 2011, the latter two thanks to Hurricane Irene, and I can't count on any of those as repeats.

It's a Royal Tern, trust me.

While a coastal VA county big year might break 300 species, I can't imagine one in Prince Edward breaking 200. But maybe I'm wrong? Hopefully I can beat my 2011 number by several species, though, so maybe 170 is a decent target to aim for. If I get that quickly... I'll reset the target!


In terms of expense... well, I'm pretty sure I won't have to take any airplanes to see birds in Prince Edward County, and hotels will be unnecessary. Additional expenses should be minimal, especially compared to my regular birding efforts. That's part of the attraction of a local, single-county big year. In terms of time, I intend to do a lot of my birding in the early mornings before classes, and to spend more time within Prince Edward that in a normal year I might spend in adjacent counties. None of this is especially unusual. Mainly, I just plan to do more, and better focused, local birding in 2014. I do plan to be out of the country for over a week during July, and maybe in June as well, but I'm gambling that local birding will be slow then, as it usually is.

The OTHER Prince Edward County

In an earlier post I emphasized that this blog is about a Virginia county and not a Canadian province... but I neglected to mention that it is also not about Prince Edward County, Ontario. Prince Edward County Ontario, home of the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory, is a fine birding area, and I suspect that on a continental level more birders are familiar with that Prince Edward than with the Virginia Prince Edward. So, as I said about PEI, if anyone arrived here while looking for information on birding Prince Edward, Ontario, my apologies, but welcome anyway.

Preliminaries: Part 3 (a bit of scouting)

Yesterday (28 Dec) I spent part of the day scouting a few locations in Prince Edward to get ready for the beginning of the big year. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of birds around. The best thing I found was a flock of about 40 American Pipits in a field that smelled as though it had recently been subjected to an application of “biosolids” (not one of my favorite euphemisms). Hopefully the pipits will hang around for four more days or so, and the smell will be gone sooner.

Where are you?
Somewhat impressionistic (i.e. blurry) Purple Finch
on my feeder last April.

Otherwise... I checked several feeders looking in vain for a Purple Finch. They are scarce so far this winter; I have not seen one at my home feeders yet. I did see a nice group of feeders at a home near Farmville that I had never noticed before, which is good since one productive feeding station from last year is gone this year.

I was also disappointed that the only ducks at Sandy River Reservoir were the usual suspects, i.e. a couple dozen Ruddy Ducks, but the lake was quite busy for this time of year. There were about 15 vehicles in the main parking lot and the concomitant number of boats buzzing around the lake. No gulls or cormorants... only a couple of Pied-billed Grebes. The local Bald Eagles also failed to put in an appearance, but they will be around. I don't blame them for hiding out yesterday.

Preliminaries: Part 2

I won't be publishing day-by-day lists of the birds I see on this blog during 2014 – I envision this as a place for summaries and various impressions I have as the year passes. But all the birds I record will be posted on eBird, so if you want detailed lists, that's the place to go. I did not adopt eBird as fast as some of my birding friends, but once I did, I was hooked quickly. I'm now an eBird reviewer and hotspot editor for Virginia and am glad to be contributing something besides my records to the project. If you happen to be reading this with no knowledge of what eBird is, please check it out.

Shorebirds have to look hard for habitat in Prince Edward (County).
Birders have to look hard for shorebirds in Prince Edward (County).
Spotted Sandpipers at Twin Lakes State Park, 2013.

Also, in case you're wondering why the word “county” is in parentheses in the blog title... I would wonder, too. Two reasons. One is simply to emphasize that this blog is not about Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada, in any way. PEI and Prince Edward (County), Virginia, are different places in different countries. I've never been to PEI, though I'd like to visit some day. So if you arrived here via a search engine looking for birding info on the smallest Canadian province... I'm sorry. But welcome, anyway.

Another reason for the parentheses is to emphasize “county,” as in county birding, county listing, and so on. I have been a county lister for many years, and adding some energy to my search for new county birds in Prince Edward is another reason for doing this big year. I'd encourage anyone who is a birder, and who doesn't already think in terms of listing birds in their home county (at least), to consider doing so. We still have a lot to learn about bird distribution at the county level, and trying to add birds to your county list(s) is a great way to make a contribution – assuming you make your data available. And eBird makes it easy to do that, and to keep up with your county lists, as long as you enter your checklist locations accurately.

Many people have done big years confined to various single counties before. You can read about a 2013 effort in South Dakota on the ABA website, and a few other online accounts include a 2008 big year in Santa Barbara County, CA and 2010 and 2011 big years in Maricopa County, AZ. All of these take a slightly different approach to birding, which makes them fun to read, and point out various issues facing a county-level big year birder. I've had trouble locating accounts of big years from Virginia counties, but if anyone knows of any, I'd like to hear about them.

Preliminaries: Part 1

I recently decided to do a big year (I hesitate to write "Big Year") in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Unless you live in Virginia you might not have heard of Prince Edward County, at least not as a birding destination. Virginia's better known birding sites are generally either coastal (think Chincoteague, Cape Charles, and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel) or in the mountains (i.e. Shenandoah National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and more). But I live in the Piedmont, near the middle of the state, and for the last 15+ years a great deal of my birding has been done in Prince Edward County. Though not as rich in bird life as some of the areas just mentioned, it has its charms.

Location of Prince Edward County, VA (red).
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

I lived in Prince Edward for several years, and though I no longer do, I still drive through it on my way to work (I teach at Southside Virginia Community College in Keysville), and I still bird there quite a bit thanks to the many accessible public birding areas in the county. These include Briery Creek WMA, Sandy River Reservoir, and Wilck's Lake, three areas I visit frequently. So the first reason I might give for doing a big year is simply convenience. It's a lot easier for me to do a big year in a county I'm already birding in than any other one -- including Buckingham, where I live, which is actually larger and would be more difficult to cover logistically. So if I'm going to do a big year, and I don't intend to do one on the statewide level (not this year!), Prince Edward seems an obvious choice.

Red-necked Phalarope at Wilck's Lake, 22 May 2013.
Good luck seeing one in the county in 2014....

A second reason is that for some time I have been writing a birding guide and annotated checklist for the birds of Prince Edward County, and I have the idea that doing a big year would give me a final push to track down some birds that I believe should be better documented in the county before I finish the guide and attempt to publish it in some format. These include a couple of owls, a few migrant songbirds, and perhaps a couple of shorebird species. More details on these as the year progresses.

I might identify other reasons for this big year, but for now, I'll post this so my new blog has some content. I'm not sure who might actually read this, but here we go....