The first bird of the first day of the Big Year was a song sparrow.
It would have been a Canada goose, but Bob Ake, bless his heart, knew I wanted to be there when he got his first bird, so he ignored that goose honking outside his house before I arrived at
7 a.m. on New Year's Day.
Most of Ake's friends had expected him to start birding at midnight, listening for owls in the treetops, but he planned to take it easy on the first day of the Big Year, birding only dawn to sunset.
This week, he's in Texas looking for birds. In the next few weeks, he'll pick up Southern California and Arizona. He'll go twice this year to Alaska and take several offshore trips into the Pacific.
He's aiming to see 650 species of birds in 2010, more than he's ever seen before in a single year. Birders call such an effort a Big Year, and it doesn't happen by accident. Most people spend months getting organized.
Ake has been preparing for this all his life.
To track his progress, here's his blog:
http://bobsbirds.blogspot.com/
