Birdathon, 2002
When team leader Dave Eshbaugh e-mailed me the Monday before Birdathon to announce that our team had been combined with that of Tim Janzen, and that there would only be four of us on the team this year, I admit to moments of panic. Tim is one of the top field birders in Oregon. Nearly every year that I've participated in Birdathon, Tim's team has set the record for the number of species identified. They've also set the record for the fastest pace, the most miles driven, and the least amount of sleep. Now he was going to be my team's co-leader? And with only four of us on the team (most Gonzo teams have eight members), I wouldn't be able to let up on my concentration even once. Every pair of eyes and ears would be working double- time. I immediately stepped up my training schedule for the last week, drilling with my bird identification software over and over.
We met Friday morning at Dave's house and loaded our gear into a rented Mercury SUV. Co-leading the team were Dave, who is Executive Director of the Audubon Society of Portland, and Tim, who is a local family-practice physician. Also on the team was Bill Scheibel, a radiologist currently living in Iowa. Bill used to live in Oregon and returned in order to participate in Birdathon. Together we formed The Mixed Flock, our team name for the weekend.
We took the fastest roads south and then west, where we began our 48-hour count at 3:00 p.m. in North Bend, on the Oregon coast. Our first bird was a Greater Yellowlegs. We spent Friday afternoon and evening birding between North Bend and Bandon. The wind was fierce, keeping the birds hunkered down behind rocks and dunes, and nearly blowing my spotting scope over several times. When the temperature began to drop even more, the wind began to blow even harder, and the light began to fade, we called an end to the day with our count at 69 species.
Saturday morning began with a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call and a 4:30 a.m. departure. We joined with the van carrying the team from the Backyard Bird Shop, appropriately named "The Retail Hawks." They took advantage of Tim and Dave's knowledge of this southern-Oregon route and followed us for most of the rest of the weekend. It was good to get to know this congenial group, and to have their extra ears and eyes to help us find the birds. We spent Saturday morning finding as many more coastal species as we could before heading inland. We stopped several places in the coast range and along the Rogue River Valley en route to the Klamath area, where we planned to spend Saturday afternoon and evening as well as Sunday morning. Our species count crept higher and higher, with some surprises like a Lark Sparrow and a Pectoral Sandpiper. My neck began to get stiff from scanning the treetops, and my eyes ached from squinting into the spotting scope and through my binoculars. We squeezed every minute of daylight that we could, giving up only when it got so dark that we couldn't see to identify what was out there. Following dinner in Klamath Falls most of our group collapsed into bed, but a few stalwart souls (including Tim from our team) drove back out into the country for owling. They got back to the hotel sometime around 2:00 a.m., which didn't give them long to sleep before our 4:45 a.m. wake-up call.
Latest Articles