Date: 4/28/25 6:00 pm From: Jeff Cox <jeffacox54...> Subject: Re: Southern OK Big Day
Hi Landon,
Congratulations on your Great Big Day! That’s quite a feat! Doing any Big Day takes tremendous planning and determination to develop a route and schedule and try to stick with it, or to improvise as needed.
I don’t know about this effort by Texas birders a few years ago – I don’t see it in ABA Listing Central. Is there another repository of Big Day reports?
Some of you may remember that Kenn Kaufman, Jim Arterburn, and I set the OK Big Day twice, with 177 species in 1996 and 180 in 2001, using a northern route both times. In 2009, we tried a southern route similar to yours, on April 27. We battled with road construction and poor weather, and settled for 160 species, so we never got around to publishing it. (But I see it would still make the top 10 for Oklahoma, so maybe I’ll do that.)
Anyway, good job!
Jeff
Jeff Cox
Tulsa, OK
From: okbirds <OKBIRDS...> On Behalf Of Landon Neumann
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2025 3:52 PM
To: <OKBIRDS...>
Subject: [OKBIRDS] Southern OK Big Day
Overall, I do think you could get 200 species in a day in OK from late April to mid May. I've run this route twice now. First time was the first week of May and had 165 species. I made some slight changes to the route this time by fine tuning the route and adding Crosstimbers WMA for a couple species. However, I think the key to 200 species in a day in OK is Hackberry being great (it was good on Saturday but the excessive rain reduced the amount of mud it appeared so we missed some easy peeps) and having great weather (cloudy, no wind, and cold front, which we had on Saturday), plus some luck. You could easily run this route next weekend when theoretically there are more potential species and get less than 187 if you get a hot windy day.
