A Lifer on on October Global Big Day 2021

Lesser Black-backed Gull

On October 9, 2021 eBird celebrated its fourth annual October Global Big Day. I participated in this event last year and ended up with 50 species; I probably could have done better if I had planned for it properly instead of deciding halfway through the morning that I wanted to do a personal big day. This time I planned for it, but health issues limited my time outside in the field to the morning only.

I had a much better idea of where I wanted to go this time, and unlike the Global Big Day last May, which was limited due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions then in place, planned to leave my 5-mile radius. After a great outing at Bruce Pit on Monday in which I tallied 40 species, the loop around the pond was sure to help me reach my goal of beating the 50 species I tallied last year. I also planned to hit a couple of trails in Stony Swamp (a short walk along the Rideau Trail at the P6 parking lot and Sarsaparilla Trail), the Ottawa River for diving birds, the Eagleson ponds for shorebirds, and the Moodie Quarry/Trail Road landfill for gulls and more waterfowl.

January Song Sparrows

Song Sparrow

The Song Sparrow is one of the most common sparrows across much of North America – even if you can’t say for certain whether you’ve ever seen one, you’ve almost certainly heard one at some point, even if you didn’t recognize its song. Song Sparrows are the exact opposite of the “habitat specialist” – they live in a wide variety of open habitats, including marshes, open grasslands, desert scrub, agricultural fields, overgrown pastures, alvars and old fields, lake edges, forest edges, and not-so-quiet suburbs. It is a rare day when I go out birding between late March and mid-November when I don’t at least hear one of these birds singing in the background or chipping at me from a dense thicket next to the walking path.

Scoters on October Big Day 2020

Lesser Yellowlegs

On October 17, 2020 eBird celebrated its third annual October Global Big Day. Normally these Big Day events are held in May, but in 2018 the Cornell Lab of Ornithology decided it couldn’t wait a full year to do another one, and held the first annual October Big Day later that year. Birders recorded a total of 6,331 species across the world on the first October Big Day, which is held from midnight to midnight in each birder’s time zone. The second October Big Day in 2019 saw more than 20,000 eBirders tallying a total of 6,709 species, and so in 2020, eBird aimed to have more than 25,000 people submit eBird checklists on October 17.

I’ve gone out on previous Big Days and submitted my sightings, but never really made it a personal big day. That changed this year, although when I went out first thing in the morning I didn’t really plan to do a big day – my main goal was to visit Shirley’s Bay and Andrew Haydon Park to look for a few species I was missing this year, with a stop in at Jack Pine Trail to look for sparrows. I had actually just reached my goal of 200 species in Ottawa two days earlier with the additions of Red-breasted Merganser, Surf Scoter and Common Loon, but I was still missing birds like Horned Grebe, Greater Scaup, Black Scoter, White-winged Scoter and Long-tailed Duck.