The Trans-Canada Jay Highway

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Welcome birders to fall migration and a new episode of The Big Year Podcast, with me your congenial host, Robert Baumander.   It’s the time of where the phrase, “there’s no birding like shore birding” comes to mind.  

In fact, I’ve written a little song to commemorate the Occasion:

There’s no birding like shore birding. 

There’s no birding I know. 

Every little sandpiper is amazing. 

Every little plover is divine.

Nowhere can you can you get that birdy feeling

When you are see-ing a Snowy Plover

There’s no birders like shore birders

They smile at the sea shore

Yesterday they told you, you had missed the bird

Today you’re back to get your Lifer Plover

And you’re heart’s racing for more

Just yesterday down at Turkey Point Beach in Norfolk County, I enjoyed a young, migrating Red Knot, mingling with a Semipalmated Sandpiper and a few Semipalmated Plovers.  Closer to home, we had shorebirds and sandpipers in farmer’s fields, especially sod farms and flooded fields.  First up, here in Brant County, was a Short-billed Dowitcher, and over a dozen American Golden Plovers at our local sod farm. Baird’s Sandpipers came next, followed by everyone’s favorite fall migrant, the Buff-breasted Sandpiper.  The dowitcher was a new county bird, species 248, finally landing me in the top five all time for Brant County in just under six years.  Hey, I like numbers, I like lists and lists of numbers. Anyway, all of us avid birders here in Brant County got our first looks at the buff-breasted last year at this time, and we were lucky enough to get one again this year too.

In fact, I got see it with two of my favorite local birders, Ellen and Jerry Horak.  And wouldn’t you know it, the more obsessive half of the couple, Ellen, just happens to be my guest today.  A nice little bit of Serendipity, if you will.  In fact, after a winter trip to Costa Rica, it was Ellen’s 601st species of the year.  Again with the numbers. I had a year like that in 2016, when Sue and I went to Panama for a week in January.  That was part of my Birds and Blue Jays Big Year.  That year I was traveling with the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club on all their Major League road trips.  It was a true North American Big Year.  We saw 229 species during our week in Panama and I counted 483 in the ABA Area, ending the year with a combined 665 species, and a back that would put me in the hospital just two months later.  In fact I spent three weeks in the hospital, ending my consecutive daily eBird streak at over 800 days when I spent a couple of days in a windowless intensive care unit. 

Ellen and Jerry’s third consecutive Big Year was a Canada Big Year.  As you know from last season, Ellen and Jerry began with a Brant County Big Year in 2023 counting over 200 species, followed by an Ontario Big Year in 2024, where they finished in first place with over 330 species. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back and catch up, and and you’ll be ready for this newest installment.  For 2025 they hit the trifecta, ending up first in Canada with 431 species, joining the exclusive 400 club for Canada.  This is he equivalent of the 700 club,(no not that one), for the ABA Area.  The 400 club includes Neil and Andrea MacLeod, who set the bar with 457 species in 2018. The Sandy Komito of Canada, Bruce Dilabio, the current record holder with 480 species, has topped 400 species four times.  David M Bell who’s 435 species ranks him fifth all time for Canada in a single year had has topped 400 twice.  Other members of the 400 club include previous guest Gavin McKinnon, who had back to back 400 plus years, including 425 species last year, only six species behind Ellen and Jerry.  Rounding up the 400 club, we have Rain Saulnier and Jacob Stasso with 406 and Monica Nugent,(405).  Oh, I forgot me!  I had the record for all of one year in 2022 with 458 species.  

The newest members of the 400 club, Ellen and Jerry, are also part of the even more exclusive 431club.  Only eight birders have ever topped 430 in a single year, here in the Great White North, with our friend Bruce having done it twice.

Well, enough with number crunching, which is, as you may guessed, is a favorite activity, if not obsession of mine, and on with the show.