Turtle Back Zoo
Team Birdin’ with Glorious Purpose (see the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Loki for reference – our nerddom covers many genera) 2024 comprised of Tedor Whitman (CHA), Wendi Mulvey (CHA), and Jenna Zimmerman (Turtle Back Zoo). We’re a Level 1 Team competing in the Limited Geographic Area (LGA) category. We bird in Essex County, acknowledged to be the most difficult county to bird in for the WSB. Home to New Jersey’s largest city and airport, an almost complete suburbanization of the rest of the County, and a lack of both a shoreline and large, open fields, birding in Essex County is an enormous challenge. But because the collective conservation efforts of the Essex County government, along with Essex County’s many small cities and town governments, along with conservation organizations like the Cora Hartshorn Arboretum, Greenwood Gardens, the Riverkeepers, the South Mountain Conservancy, and the Zoological Society of New Jersey; there are still many small places in Essex County to go and find birds thriving. All we have to do is go find them during our 24 hours of the WSB.
The 2024 World Series started out like most of our past Essex County WSB’s. We started seriously scouting our hot spots in April, trying to get a feel of which birds were in each place. We consulted notes from previous years and adjusted our scheduled routes. We explored a few new spots as potential stopping points. We cajoled friends to be the 3:30am to 9:30am driver. We fueled up Wendi’s SUV and gathered our food and gear for the day. I had an additional challenge in that I had a massive tooth infection the Sunday night before the event, and it took my poor dentist almost 4 hours to get that tooth out of my mouth on Monday. Needless to say, I was going to be on soft foods for the day.
Our strategy for the day was as follows:
Prelim – Not be able to get a late Friday afternoon nap because of jitters.
Step 1 – Midnight to 3:00 – Wander around the forests and wetlands of Essex County in the dark and not hear owls, other nightbirds, and migrating night bird calls. Return to the Arboretum at 3:00am frustrated that we have only three birds during our first three hours.
Step 2 – Take a terrible 30-minute nap.
Step 3 – Get to our favorite passerine hot spot before dawn. Listen for any late owls (got the Greathorned Owl) and wait for the dawn chorus to wash over us. Bird the living daylights out of that area and see/hear every single blackbird, corvid, dove, flycatcher, finch, gnatcatcher, nuthatch, sparrow, thrush, vireo, warbler, and woodpecker that we can find. If we heard or saw a bird not part of the list above, count it anyway. Try to leave at 9:30 with at least 70 birds.
Step 4 – Get to our favorite wetlands as quickly as possible and look for waterfowl, waders, shorebirds, raptors, and the passerines that like wetlands better than woodlands. Bird until about 11:00 and leave with hopefully a total of 90 birds.
Step 4 – Go to all the little hotspots on the west side of Essex County and try to pick up two or three birds at each stop. Get a Mute Swan near the Mall, the Red-headed Woodpecker at the powerline cut, the Eastern Phoebe at the bridge over the stream. Try to have 100 birds at this point. Step 5 – Return to the Arboretum at 2:00pm. Take a nap. At 3:00pm wake up and have scheduled lack-of-sleep tiff with the rest of the team.
Step 6 – Get over to the east side of Essex County and visit Weequahic Lake and Newark Sound. Try to pick up another dozen or so birds like gulls, terns, waterfowl, and shorebirds.
Step 7 – Long drive to Hilltop Reservation. Try to have a driver like Alex who drives like their grandmother if their grandmother was a grand prix driver. Just close your eyes and pretend to sleep in the back seat. Arrive at Hilltop adrenalinized from the drive. Look for soaring raptors like the Broad-winged Hawk. Try to pick up any missing passerines.
Step 8 – Return to favorite hotspot of Step 3 and try to get last of missing passerines. We got our absent Swainson’s Trush and Eastern Wood-Pewee.
Step 9 – Sundown at a small pond where there is supposed to be a nesting Eastern Screech-Owl. Don’t hear any owls. Do get so totally distracted by the young Northern Flying Squirrel (doesn’t count because it’s not a bird) that we almost miss bird # 118 as a Green Heron flies by.
Step 10 – Stop birding at 8:00pm because that was 20 hours of birding. Return to Arboretum. Take an hour to write up report and email to NJ Audubon and submit tally on eBird. Step 11 – Go home and sleep.
The 2024 WSB was in most ways similar to our past series. There were birds we were surprised to miss like Cedar Waxwing and Common Loon. We also got birds that were a complete surprise like the Horned Grebe and Clapper Rail. What was completely new was that we won this year’s LGA category. Our 118 birds put us at 91.5% of par. Par is the sliding scale that NJ Audubon uses to help put all the teams in the LGA category on an even playing field. 118 birds would not be a very impressive score in Atlantic (184 par), Cumberland (174), or Ocean County (185). But 118 birds in Essex County whose par is 129… well that is a good score. Good enough to come in 1st place. Apparently, we even get a trophy. I didn’t know that because this is the first time I’ve ever been on a 1st place team.
So many thanks to Wendi and Jenna for that epic 20-hour birding tour and for having the good grace to say it was fun. And many thanks to drivers Marguerite (please don’t drive us into a ditch again), Shannyn (you say “bird” as if it was spelled “burd”), Jackie (“Go ahead and put your muddy feet on the seats. I don’t care, it’s my husband’s car”), and Alex (he’s driving like he wants to get this done really quickly) for getting us where we needed to go with poise and kindness. And heartfelt thanks to all our supporters who donated to the cause. Each and every donation does help make life a little easier for the birds of Essex County.
Written by Tedor Whitman.