1st Annual Earth Day Birding Challenge or The Adverntures of the Blue-Footed Boobies - Year One!

When was it? The event was held on Saturday, April 24, 2010 - Midnight to Midnight

What was it? A friendly 24-hour birding competition/fundraiser to support the Friends of the Desert Mountains, various Audubon Societies and Bird Clubs, Preserves, Parks, Conservancies and other conservation organizations throughout southern California

Thanks to Coachella Valley Green (find their link at bottom of page) for the story below, written by Kyri Freeman - Member of The Desert Cities Birding Club and The Blue-Footed Boobies.

What happened? It’s 3:45 AM in Palm Desert on April 24th, 2010, and a lonely mockingbird is singing through the warm night.

He’s bird number 1.

This is the start of the 2010 Earth Day Birding Challenge, a fun and competitive 24-hour bird-a-thon to raise money for habitat protection via Friends of the Desert Mountains. Our team is called the Blue-footed Boobies, after a favorite bird of precocious seven-year-old team member Luke. Luke is in the back seat, next to his friend, the quiet, polite 13-year-old Julian.

Kurt, our leader, jumps in the car, starts it up, and we’re off to the Salton Sea.

It’s predawn when we get there. The dawn chorus is just beginning, issuing not from songbirds but from Black-bellied Plovers: a looping, it’s eerie, ethereal call. A Lesser Nighthawk ghosts along the shore. As sun rises, vermilion_flycatcher.jpgbinoculars and scope come out: shorebirds, gulls, ducks—we check off each species. There’s no time to try and see a bird only identified by sound. We drive on along the Sea, leaning out the windows to check the wires, stopping for more birds: Semipalmated Plover, Bank Swallow, Red-breasted Merganser...

On Johnson Road a bird jumps out by the roadside. “Grackle,” someone says.

“Blackbird,” I demur. “Yellow-headed!” And then the bird turns, showing his brilliant yellow head, and flies, flashing white in the wings. That’s a good bird, a bird we could easily have missed. We’ll need more of those as the day goes on, but we’re doing well so far.

The sun is high in the sky by the time we leave the Sea and head for the Coachella Valley Wild Bird Center in Indio. Franklin’s Gulls, with their wild white-ringed eyes, play in the sewage treatment ponds. We check off more birds: teal, sandpipers, a brilliant male Blue Grosbeak. Kurt has students doing the bird-a-thon, and they are here in force with binoculars and questions. It’s fantastic to see so many college students interested in wildlife, spending their Saturday out looking at birds. But at the same time, the desire to move on, move faster, just like the urge to migrate, makes me restless here. I’m glad to get back in the car and head west to Whitewater.

Whitewater Canyon is glorious with bright yellow brittlebush. We head up a side canyon. Kurt calls like a lovelorn Mountain Quail, over and over again. We listen. There’s no reply. He keeps calling. Still nothing, and we have to move on. Farther down, we stand by the road, peering into the trees, listening. An exuberant burbling song must be a House Wren ophainopepla._bird.jpgr a Rufous-crowned Sparrow, but we’d rather see one. We end up counting them as House Wren and later hear about 100 more. Then I think I hear a Black-headed Grosbeak singing, but it’s a brilliant red male Summer Tanager who perches on a cottonwood trunk to give us a look.

At the Whitewater Preserve Visitor Center the parking lot is jammed. Huell Howser, the host of California’s Gold is filming something. Howser comes up to Kurt and says jovially, “What about these birds here!” But Julian and I start shushing them: a Lesser Goldfinch just happens to be sitting on a cup nest half a foot above their heads. Too late: the bird flushes, startling everyone, and we make our escape down the canyon. We add more birds: wrens and goldfinches, warblers and orioles, and the endangered Least Bell’s Vireo.

All these birds need the desert oases. Some live here, some migrate here to breed, some are just passing through. But all of them depend on the water and the native vegetation. They can’t live in a cookie-cutter housing development or a mall. They are why habitat protection is indispensable.

We head out to Big Morongo Canyon Preserve and Covington Park. These are world-renowned birding hotspots, nestled in a pass between the higher San Gorgonio massif and the lower, arid mountains of Joshua Tree National Park. The park and the feeders at a nearby house are swarming with birds: a Long-Eared Owl nest with a chick; a Red-tailed Hawk nest with well-grown fledglings; brilliant Vermilion Flycatchers and Western Tanagers. We hear a distinctive “zee” call, and though we never see the bird, it’s the call of a Lazuli Bunting: another for the list.

But the Morongo Preserve itself, usually alive with birds, is quiet and still in the heatwhite_headed_woodpecker_male_by_steve_myers1.jpg of the day. Luke and Julian get bored and start to roughhouse. We look at the feeders, but there’s no White-throated Sparrow, no Black-chinned Hummingbird. Even on the famous marsh trail we only add a few species. A mystery warbler torments us from deep in the vegetation: MacGillivray’s? Common Yellowthroat? We can’t be sure.

Hot and hungry, we head back for the feeders, only to find we missed the sparrow. A Calliope Hummingbird, like a golf ball with wings, is scant consolation.

When we drive away I feel a little betrayed, and I think Kurt does too. Morongo should have been better than that. Up until then we were doing really well and now we’re just doing OK, falling behind where we wanted to be.

Next we head up into the mountains, looking for cooler air and different birds. We stop to pick up a Black-tailed Gnatcatcher scolding from the brush, and are on our way. Luke and Julian both fall asleep in the back seat as the Santa Rosas rise around us.

There’s snow in Idyllwild! I throw a snowball at Kurt, which he adroitly dodges. And now new birds start to come: jays and nuthatches, juncos and woodpeckers; mountain birds. Our energy re-surges.

One feature of the bird-a-thon is the need to see even common species (and the surprising difficulty you can have in finding them!). An American Robin on a lawn is the fulfillment of a quest. A couple of Brewer’s Blackbirds get a “Yeah, baby!” We pay $7 to get into a little campground where we add that inglorious non-rarity, American Crow. Still, the birds are piling up: I jump out of the car to tag a Red-shouldered Hawk on a snag, and Kurt unerringly puts his scope on a Bald Eagle.

Walking through the woods, single file and quietly in step, looking and listening, we start to feel to me like a single creature. I wonder if this wordless accord was something our ancestors felt when they went out together to hunt.

Finally, the sun is starting to set. In the chaparral and rocks, we hear a Scott’s Oriole singing. It may be our last bird for the night. We head back down the mountain.

Somehow, even though I mboobies_bird_team.jpgiss the turnoff for the Cook Street Starbucks, I make it the 113 miles home to Apple Valley. There, in a fog of exhaustion, I check my email. There’s one from Kurt.

“Almost sat on a Glossy Snake,” he writes. “But heard a Barn Owl over the Living Desert parking lot!”

That’s Bird #141.

It goes without saying that we won the First Annual Bird-a-thon and get to keep the perpetual trophy for a year. It’s more important that we raised money to keep wildlife habitat safe.

And next year, we’ll be back to break our own record.

This article was provided courtesy of Coachella Valley Green, to go to their website, click here