In birding parlance, a Big Year is a formal or informal personal challenge among birders (or of oneself) to identify as many species as possible in a single calendar year. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has taken that concept and condensed the challenge into one Global Big Day — a 24-hour birding event in which anyone in the world can log bird sightings into global database eBird. This year’s Global Big Day was held Saturday, May 4th, with organizers hoping to break 2018’s world record of 7,025 species reported in one day.
Global Big Day was created by the Cornell Lab in 2015 as a fun event for the global birding community, to unite people in their shared passion for birds while collecting unprecedented information on where and when birds occur around the world. Global Big Day is also a fundraiser for the Cornell Lab and eBird to support their work transforming eBird data into science and research products that support bird conservation worldwide.
Our Big Day in the Upper Lemhi
I’ll take any excuse to go birding, and the opportunity to contribute to Global Big Day was a good one. Mr. giddy and I plotted our route, set the alarm for 05:00, packed a lunch and few IPAs, and headed to the upper Lemhi Valley, a vast, high-elevation sea of sagebrush just west of the Continental Divide in east-central Idaho. Honestly, May 4 is an odd time to bird in our region; most migrants don't arrive until late May. Nevertheless, we set out to see what was “out there," embracing an element of chance to see something truly special. The following is a photo diary of our day of birding in this remote, wild, and spectacular landscape.
We birded from 6:30 am — 6:30 pm tallying a total of 54 species:
Some of our memorable Global Big Day observations:
- a kettle of 5 juvenile Golden Eagles circling overhead (my god they’re huge!)
- a courting pair of the whitest, most beautiful Ferruginous Hawks I’ve ever seen
- the chatty, melodious song of Sage Thrashers
- lumbering bumble bees and speedy tortoiseshell butterflies
- herds of Mule Deer, Pronghorn, and Elk
- a close encounter with a Pygmy Rabbit
Global Big Day Worldwide Tally
Worldwide, 6,840 bird species were tallied by 33,251 participants (as of 5/11/19). The countries of Colombia and Peru had the highest species counts, at 1,591 and 1,516, respectively. The U.S. logged 717 species reported by ~20,000 participants. For a detailed look at Global Big Day 2019 stats, click here.
Consider joining the Global Big Day in 2020! No need to commit to birding for 24 hours—an hour or even 10 minutes of watching birds puts you on the team. To participate you’ll need to sign up for an eBird account, head out to watch birds on Global Big Day (midnight to midnight in your local time zone), and enter what you see and hear on eBird via their website or free eBird mobile app. The data you contribute can be used by researchers around the world to better spend conservation dollars, more effectively preserve land, and better understand where species may be declining in specific parts of their range.
Your turn Chorus friends: Please share your latest observations, wisdom, photos, and fun facts on birds in your corner of the universe.