Gualala Birds

Earlier this month I watched a Youtube video by Bob Duchesne talking about what expert birders don’t tell beginners.

As a beginner, I’m definitely interested in hearing from experts what I’m missing. But what stuck with me from the video wasn’t what he said I was missing, rather what I have.

What I have, he says, is the joy of discovering a new bird species. There are only so many birds in the US that most of us get to see (lower 48, ~ 950 species.) While that is a big number, a lot of birders seem to get to the 6-700 species seen within their first 8-10 years of active birding. That leaves the next few hundred birds which seemingly take another 8-10 years. Because of this rapid slowing of seeing new species, that means expert birders are now seeing the “same ‘ole birds” for a long period of time.

I feel like I’m in a sweet spot – I have… let me see.. checking eBird… hold on… just hit 130 species. I’ve added 10 new species just in the last 30 days. I still get excited about new species sightings… lifers. One thing I’ve noticed this year is that I seem to get “batches” of new birds. For example, in June I only added 5 new species. But now that I’m looking at my list, I see that this year I’ve been adding on average about 7-8 birds per month. Seeing this data and now writing it down actually shifts my perception. There were periods in August and September where it felt like I was standing in my normal spots and seeing nothing. That wasn’t true… the “regular” birds could still be seen, but I had hit a dry spell of a week of not seeing anything new or exciting. What my data says is I shouldn’t have felt like I was seeing nothing – i was averaging 2 new birds a week!

(Exciting sightings – that should be a post on its own. There are birds I don’t see often enough that when I do see them, I get excited. Pick any owl as a starter.)

I’m still trying to find my rhythm for this blog – how do I manage my musings vs actual bird sightings.

The last few days have been pretty exciting regarding bird sightings – so I think I’ll break this up into “musings” vs pure sightings.