Big Year

As a year-long celebration of my decade and a half as a Naturalist in Cook County, Minnesota, I have started a birding Big Year.  The Big Year is done by birders around the world.  Participants pick out a geographical area, and find as many bird species as they can in one year.  Some of the options are: Earth, North America, the Continental United States, one state, one county, or your backyard.  I am going to do a ten-mile radius around myself.  If I am already going somewhere, I bird along the way.  A few years ago, I did another Big Year (April 2014 - April 2015).  I was much more of a novice birder at the time, but was still able to see a lot of species.  My goal this time is to beat my old record, learn a lot about birding, and add several new bird species to my life list.

This blog is starting out as a way for me to chronicle my birding adventures over the next year, and into the future as well.  I'll post the types of birds I run across as well as photos of many of the birds I see.  Day one of my Big Year was April 30, 2017, and the year will end on April 29, 2018.

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)