Six years ago today I began a quest to become a birder. I began birding by chasing a Smew in Whitby Harbor after seeing my first bird of my first year of birding, a Northern Cardinal, out my back window. Over the next 366 days of the 2012 leap year I birded all across Canada and the US during my first Big Year. I’m still learning and still obsessed with finding birds. I ended 2017 birding with a bunch of folks all out for a rare visitor to Ontario, a Tufted Duck. I have seen them on two occasions in the US but it was exciting to add the Tufted Duck to my Ontario Life list, which now stands at 316 species.
To begin my new year, this January 1, 2018, a frigid day in Toronto, Ontario, I started the by birding in James Gardens. For the first time since I started birding there were no birds at our backyeard feeders early on New Years Day. My first bird of 2018 was, fittingly, a Blue Jay. Birds did eventually show up at our feeders, the first of which was a White-throated Sparrow, picking seed out of a planter box::
This will be a another year for adding Lifers. On Wednesday Sue and I are on our way to Trinidad for 7 full days of birding, on my first trip to South America. Sue has been there, but since it’s my first trip there will be LOTS of Lifers and I will once again pass her on our friendly Life List competition. There are over 400 possible species and 150 possible Lifers, which will finally put me over 1000 on my World Life list in my 6 years of birding.
My other goal for the year is to visit states and provinces in the ABA area I have not birded in. I have birded in 24 of the 49 continental US states and just 4 of Canada’s 10 provinces. I need to get to work on that. In 2017 I added 13 ABA Life Birds, plus the Black-backed Oriole. It will be hard to add that many species to the ABA List this year without a lot of travel.
Let the birding begin!
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