Photo: Laura McDonald
By Greg Butcher, ASNV Vice President
It’s always fun when you see a bird that eBird questions! So it was satisfying on Saturday, October 9, when I recorded two Northern Rough-winged Swallows and eBird demanded documentation. It was amusing when eBird questioned the sighting of 210 cowbirds in an hour, but they went streaming by all morning. And I was disappointed when eBird didn’t question the Scarlet Tanager that several of us saw, that I thought was pretty late for northern Virginia.
Those were the highlights of The Big Sit at the Mustang Trailhead in Meadowood Special Recreation Area attended by more than 20 staffers, board members, and friends of the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia (ASNV).
(I hope you are all eBirding when you bird. eBird organizes bird records from all over the world and adds information immediately upon receiving it. eBird data is then available to answer a wide variety of questions about bird distributions that everyone can access. But this article isn’t about eBird, it’s about The Big Sit!)
When I go birding, I usually walk a steady pace the whole time, stopping only when I see or hear a bird, then moving on again. So I was a late convert to The Big Sit, where one or a few people draw a small circle and promise to stay inside, counting all the birds seen or heard from that one spot.
The Big Sit was started in 1992 by the New Haven Bird Club in Connecticut and turned into a global event by BirdWatcher’s Digest from 2001-2019. It is now back in the hands of New Haven. The circle size is 17 feet in diameter.
In 2017, Laura McDonald and Zach Reichold decided that it would be fun to do a Big Sit at Meadowood, where Zach is the manager for the Bureau of Land Management. They quickly roped me into the plan, and I have been the chief bird-list-keeper in 2017, 2018, and 2021. I start a half-hour before dawn, so I can be sure to hear the nearby Barred Owl, and other people (and birds) come and go all morning.
We had 37 species this year, compared to a high of 46 species in 2018 and a low of 35 species in 2017. Surprisingly, we have seen a total of 62 species in the three years; bird sightings in migration are unpredictable!
We saw hundreds more birds this year than the two previous years: 815 starlings, 335 cowbirds, 153 Canada Geese, 111 redwings, 51 bluebirds, and 43 Blue Jays for a total of 1,708 individual birds in a total of five and a half hours!
A scientific study has proven that you see (and hear!) more birds when you are quiet. So, we made a big mistake this year: we socialized way too much! We had way too much people-to-people conversation (and laughter!). With that much migration going on, we probably missed several (many?) species that we could have gotten if we had focused more on the birds. Too bad, so sad!
If you want to do your own Big Sit, I recommend finding a place in view of water. There’s a Big Sit at Riverbend Park on the Potomac that sees a lot of species. But you might consider joining us at Meadowood next year and sacrificing a few birds for some good camaraderie among friendly birdwatchers.
View the official results of this year’s Big Sit here.