Date: 4/23/24 7:42 pm From: Kenny Nichols <kingbird101...> Subject: Re: Big Day Challenge
Ragan,Â
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but Dick Baxter and I set a new Big Day record last May. Surprisingly, the previous record had stood for nearly 24 years after the record before it stood for ...one day.Â
On 8 May 1999, Tennessee birders Jeff Wilson and Mark Greene set a new Arkansas Big Day mark of 165 species. Late that same evening, Bo Verser and I made plans to run a Big Day on 9 May. We had no idea that Jeff and Mark had set a new record and were hoping to beat the mark of 160 set years earlier by Jeff and Mississippi birder Gene Knight. We only found about the new record when we stopped by my house to pick up a couple of feeder birds. Jeff had called my house and told LaDonna about the new threshold. Undaunted, Bo and I soldiered on and, somehow, managed to top their 165 mark with a new record of 168.Â
Fast forward almost 24 years later to 3 May 2023 when Dick and I managed to count 176 species in a single day. Amazingly, we spent not a single minute scouting our route and only about 30 minutes planning a possible route over pizza the night before, with much of the route consisting of areas we seldom if ever bird.Â
Hopefully, our schedules will allow us the opportunity to top that mark this year.Â
Kenny NicholsDardanelle
On Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 09:24:41 AM CDT, Ragan Sutterfield <000003499a91e99c-dmarc-request...> wrote:
With Dan Scheiman's absence, the annual BirdAR big day competition didn't come together this year (though I understand it will be back next year). As the reigning BirdAR champions, The Thrashers team wants to keep in practice, so we plan on doing a big day this spring and would love for others to join us in some friendly competition. The rules are simple: teams of 2 or more must bird together for the entire day. Each bird that counts must be seen or heard by at least 2 team members. A day is midnight to midnight. The birding day can be any you like before May 20. (Also generally observe the ABA Big Day rules: https://www.aba.org/aba-big-day-count-rules/). All birds must be within the Arkansas state line. Uta Meyer from Audubon Delta has agreed to provide BirdAR t-shirts to anyone who participates and if enough folks are up for it, we may have a time to share our totals, etc. Let me know if you get a team together and share your totals when you've completed your big day!
