Birding By Number

"The bird sings. Its feathers shine."

—Wallace Stevens

I

When I was five years old, I had a maroon jacket. A thin white stripe ran the length of each sleeve. I wore that jacket everywhere. In the left-hand pocket was a hole that opened into the lining. It was a place I could stash anything that caught my eye: a cigarette butt, a battered bottle cap. Anything different, out of the ordinary. Secured in the jacket's lining these cast-offs might escape the notice of my parents for weeks. But every so often, they would wash my jacket. And it was on one of these occasions that they found a bird. It had been flattened by traffic but was still recognizable. An inquisitive child, I had seen this bird as extraordinary, something to be acknowledged and treasured. A pressed flower.

________

I no longer collect dead birds. But as I sat outside the local library sketching recently, a mother and child handed me an indigo bunting, its neck snapped from a collision with the blue sky reflected in a window. I took its limp form in my hand, felt its marvelous lift, as if bone and feather were elements lighter than air itself. Already, its bright colors had started to fade.

II

Dawn in these places is fluorescent, sad, and strange. A breeze whirls fast-food wrappers across the fraying asphalt where chicory and daisy fleabane take root. Beneath the flicker of streetlights, I cross the overlarge and empty parking lot, pass a Burger King, rusty donation bins, and an RC Cola machine, and park beside a cherry-red Prius, the only other car here. Behind its wheel, Richard looks up suddenly, his large eyes pale.

________

I am here to join Richard and Spike as part of a team for the Amos Butler Audubon Society bird-a-thon. This will be my first foray into the peculiar world of competitive birding, where teams vie to identify as many species as they can within a twenty-four-hour window.

Teams come back each year. Rivalries are formed. Resentments simmer. Last year, twelve teams identified a total of 207 species (the winning team identified 164 species), down from the previous year, when fourteen teams identified 215 species, and the winning team set a bird-a-thon record of 182 species. These numbers have me on edge.

We are a new team—unknown to one another prior, and formed at the last minute—and I worry that I will prove a drag on my teammates. Both Richard and Spike took up birding before I was born—Spike in 1957 and Richard in 1966, when he was in second grade. I recently bought a pair of binoculars and started attending the Sunday morning walks led by the local Audubon chapter, during which Laurie, a short woman with hiking boots and a northeastern accent who is able to identify every song in the woods, asked if I wanted to join a bird-a-thon team. I was flattered until she mentioned that every team member would need to raise at least one hundred dollars in pledges.

________

This is how I came to be standing in an empty parking lot at 5:00 a.m. on a cold Friday morning with Richard, who brushes dark, floppy hair out his eyes as he explains to me that "the gamesmanship is finding the thing, enjoying it briefly, and moving on."

The "game" relies on knowing where and when different species are likely to be seen. Much of this knowledge comes from experience, watching the skies day in and day out. But birding, like everything else in modern life, is now driven by big data. The winning team will compare past years' migration patterns to trending data while monitoring weather patterns across the state to determine what time of month will present the optimal conditions for birding. They will scour databases such as eBird to identify recent sightings of accidentals—birds that have strayed out of their conventional range. They will map a route, establish a detailed itinerary, and prepare site-specific checklists...