The Seatuck Long Island Birding Challenge was conducted on Saturday, 26 September, for the seventh year. We thank Enrico Nardone, Stephane Perreault and others at Seatuck for the effort and care they devoted to revising and refining the rules to ensure participants’ fun and safety in this strange pandemic period.
The rules changes driven by covid concerns included a requirement that each team restrict its activities to a single county (or in the case of sprawling Suffolk County, to either the four western towns or the more easterly towns), but also relaxed the requirement for team members to travel and bird together. In combination, this probably improved overall coverage of the island and yielded a collective tally of 194 species, 10 more than the previous highest annual total for this count. This achievement is even more notable for having been made on a signiciantly later data and on a much less active migration day than that of the previous high tally. Also notable was our failure, for the first time in seven challenges, to add any new species to the cumulative species list, which still stands at 235. This is further evidence of the overall thoroughness of the teams this year in detecting uncommon, hard to find, and localized species, even in the absence of rarities. We had 8 teams in the field, with a total of 29 participants, and each of the five designated areas was represented. As noted above, it was not a major flight day, but the weather was mostly very benign all day long, without heavy winds or other impediments to birding effort. It was 63-75 F, overcast with good visibility in most places early, then warming up with sun. The biggest issue was patchy fog in the morning that reduced visibility for some. Area champions were: Brooklyn: Rails Against the Machine (Shane Blodgett, Rob Jett, Heydi Lopes, Tom Preston, and Mike Yuan) coming in at 108. Queens: Ladybyrders (Mary Normandia, Lisa Scheppke, Amy Simmons, Meryl Ackley, and Phil Ribilow), tallying 111 species. Eastern Suffolk: Masked Tityras (Patricia Lindsay, Shai Mitra, Mike Cooper and Doug Futuyma) coming in with 130. Three additional teams covered Eastern Suffolk: The Bushwackers (Richard Gostic and Bob McGrath), Savage Trackers (Stephen and Bob Savage), and The TWIN ROSE breasted Grosbeaks (Raina Angelier, Cayla, Iris and Craig Rosenhagen). And finally, the two leading teams achieved totals only two species apart: The Classic Birders (Tim Healy, Matt Klein, Ryan Mandelbaum, and Stephane Perreault), covering Nassau, was the runner-up team with 139 species. Pteam Ptarmigeddon covered Western Suffolk and came in overall first at 141, wresting back the Twitchers Trophy from the Outlaws (whose misdemeanors had resulted in their dispersion into different teams). The Pteam has competed in the Challenge with the same members every year, won the trophy the first three years, and is now back on top. Every single team had a least one “save,” a species not recorded by any other team. Tied for third were Pteam Ptarmigeddon and The Classic Birders, with 5 saves each. Second place went to Ladybyrders with 6 saves. The winner of the informal Hunters’ Hoard award (a cache of canned spinach, creamed corn, cream of mushroom soup, cling peaches, sardines, and Fancy Feast ) was the Masked Tityras, with 11 saves! Photos and more information about the event will be updated on the Seatuck website shortly: https://seatuck.org/birding-challenge/ We hope to see everybody back out in the field next year, under less stressful circumstances. Shai Mitra & Patricia Lindsay Bay Shore -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
