My Fifty Years With the North American Breeding Bird Survey

 

Route of the Steinhatchee Breeding Bird Survey Route, Taylor County, Florida

Thirty-minutes before sunrise on June 15, 1974, the air was cool and crisp with a touch of October to remind me that Wisconsin’s winter wasn’t far off. 

With me that morning was my soon-to-be wife (now ex-wife) and fellow graduate student Keith Dueholm. Ruth and Keith accompanied me to be my assistant’s on my first-ever run of a North American Breeding Bird Survey route. The route selected, named Lorraine after the township in Polk County where it began, had been run for several years by my thesis advisor, Steve Goddard. For whatever reason Steve tired of rolling out of bed at 0 dark 30, driving 90 minutes north to the start of the route at about 4:30 a.m. and then counting birds for nearly 5 hours until the route was completed.

I had been Steve’s laboratory instructor/assistant in his undergraduate/graduate level Ornithology 460 class during my second, third, and fourth years of college. Beginning graduate school, Steve said to me one day “If you’re going to be an ornithologist, I guess you should have the class on your resume. Take it this year.”

I took Ornithology while I was the laboratory assistant for the fourth year in spring quarter 1974. Steve later admitted he should have just given me an A in the class to free up time for me to take another class in another subject. I received a perfect 100 percent on all exams and field quizzes. Ornithology and Plant Taxonomy the year before were the two easiest classes I ever took in college. They were also the two classes I learned the most while taking.

The North American Breeding Bird Survey route we were conducting in Polk County was one of about 70 scattered across Wisconsin and coordinated by Sam Robbins, author of the book “Wisconsin Birdlife” and brother of famous ornithologist Chandler Robbins. In the mid-1960s Chandler and his colleague Willet T. Van Velzen at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, came up with the idea for a technique to monitor changes in bird populations over large land areas

Their technique, the North American Breeding Bird Survey, was a series of 24.5-mile-long roadside counts scattered then among the lower 48 states and distributed by well-known and recognized geophysical regions. There were a few other restrictions like not crossing state lines or geographic region boundaries. The Lorraine route was close to my hometown (although the Cumberland route, which we would conduct the following weekend was closer).

I had taught myself bird songs by listening to Roger Tory Peterson 78 rpm vinyl records all winter long each long Wisconsin winter. When spring finally rolled into northern Wisconsin I was primed and ready having listening to Chestnut-sided Warblers and Mourning Warblers and all the Flycatchers almost nightly for the previous 10 months. None of those months of training prepared me for the cacophony of voices that overwhelmed me when I stepped out of my car, clipboard in hand, and prepared to conduct my first BBS route!

Was that a Great Crested Flycatcher? That might be a Willow Flycatcher or is it an Alder? Is that bird singing slow enough to be an American Robin or is it fast enough to be a Rose-breasted Grosbeak? Those and one hundred other questions overwhelmed me as reality sunk in.

Making matters even more of a challenge was that by the rules only I could identify birds despite having assistants and all the counting must be completed in a 3-minute period after which you drive 0.5 miles to the next stop and repeat the process all over again.

After 4 ½ hours of second-guessing many of my identifications and wondering how many others I had completely missed, we came to stop 50 of the Lorraine BBS route. Our total for the morning was about 75 bird species and about 1,300 individuals. Most importantly I was hooked and could not wait to run the next route.

I didn’t have to wait long because the following weekend we conducted the Cumberland BBS route that began in Cumberland Township west of Rice Lake. At stop 1 there was a singing male Eastern Phoebe. At stop 10 a male Purple Finch and at stop 38 an American Goshawk. When the morning was over I realized I would have to wait another year before I could conduct another BBS route.

During my remaining time in Wisconsin, I ran 11 different routes extending from the central part of the state along the Mississippi River north to Chaffey in Douglas County and Shanagolden in Ashland County.

A professional move to North Dakota changed my habitat outlook and my BBS responsibilities. There I became the North Dakota State Coordinator of the BBS trying, and usually failing to find enough competent observers to conduct each of the routes in the Peace Garden State. While in North Dakota I was conducting research on breeding birds along the Platte River in Nebraska which provided the opportunity to conduct routes in Nebraska, South Dakota and I once sneaked over the border and ran a route in Wyoming.

Another move sent me from North Dakota to Georgia where because of other responsibilities I was able to conduct only one route in three years. Meanwhile with my main office now at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in suburban Washington DC I made frequent trips to the mid-Atlantic region where I was able to help Danny Bystrak conduct some of his routes in Western Maryland and one in Pennsylvania.

Another move sent me to southern California where there were too many bird dialects for me to feel secure with the abundance of bird voices and variations and I didn’t run any routes there. My final professional move was to Washington DC where, because of the concentration of competent birdwatchers and ornithologists it was nearly impossible to find a route to conduct unless I wanted to drive 7 hours to the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia to conduct an available route.

My first trip to Barrow, Alaska, was in June 2017, and while there I began wondering why nobody had ever established a BBS route on the northernmost tundra in the United States. Logistics is a major negative about traveling to Barrow – logistics and persistent summertime fog that might turn a daytrip into a weeklong trip. Several letters to the BBS office in Laurel Maryland resulted in establishment of the Barrow BBS route. It was first scheduled to be conducted in 2020 but COVID changed those plans. I finally ran it in 2021 and plan to run it each year while I still have a pulse.

At the same time, I decided it was time to begin running some routes in Florida where, like with Virginia, an abundance of competent observers makes it difficult to have a route nearby to run. I now run four routes in Florida – the one nearest to my home begins 230 miles north of Sarasota.

Despite a long hiatus away from running BBS routes while stationed in California and Washington DC, when I count the first bird on the Olustee Florida BBS route on May 15, 2024, it will mark almost 50 years to the day since I nervously stepped from my car in Polk County, Wisconsin, in June 1974 and was overwhelmed by the dawn chorus of singing males.

In 50 years of being associated with BBS routes I have seen some unusual wildlife that doesn’t fly. Consider my first Gray Wolf that crossed the highway in front of me at stop 48 on the Shanagolden BBS route in Ashland County, Wisconsin, in June 1975. Who could forget the Black Bear in eastern Wyoming who decided that I was blocking his route and I had to stay in my car until he decided to move on before I could count any more birds. A Prairie Rattlesnake along a Nebraska route caused consternation for an employee of a local CENEX station who was determined to kill the snake because it was a snake. He yelled at me and called me a couple of deleted expletives when he returned to kill the snake and found me lifting it up with a shovel and heaving it into the ditch before he could kill it. A Moose plodding down the road in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota was exciting as was a pair of Caribou and an Arctic Fox on the Barrow Alaska BBS route in 2022.

As of today, I have recorded 297 bird species on the BBS routes I have conducted. Being anally retentive it bothers me to no end that the list is not 300 species. With luck, a Bachman’s Sparrow, Swainson’s Warbler and Prothonotary Warbler will appear on a north Florida route in 2024 and put me at or over the 300 mark.

How much longer I continue to conduct BBS routes is a subject best understood by my hearing. A recent audiologist test revealed that I have lost 40 percent of the aural acuity in my left ear. A paper that Danny Bystrak and I wrote about observer bias in the BBS revealed that about 95 percent of birds recorded along a route are encountered by sound so if I have lost that much aural acuity how much longer will I be useful? A test of my hearing conducted by the Speech Pathology Department at the University of California in Davis in October 1980 showed that I had the sharpest hearing ability of anyone they had ever tested. However recently I looked at a Pine Warbler near by home who was singing. I could see his mouth open and even see little whisps of frost coming from his mouth, but I could not hear a single note of the song he was singing.

I will be back in the range of Henslow’s Sparrow and Grasshopper Sparrow in southern Minnesota in late May. Those two birds will be my test species. If I can see them singing and hear them singing I will know I haven’t lost the ability to hear birds with a high range of song. If I can only see their mouth moving with no song coming out it might be time to hang up my cleats and let younger ears do the counting I have enjoyed so much for so long.

 

List of Birds Recorded on BBS Routes from 1974 to 2023

 

#	Species
1	Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
2	Snow Goose
3	Greater White-fronted Goose
4	Brant
5	Canada Goose
6	Tundra Swan
7	Wood Duck
8	Blue-winged Teal
9	Northern Shoveler
10	Gadwall
11	American Wigeon
12	Mallard
13	American Black Duck
14	Mottled Duck
15	Northern Pintail
16	Green-winged Teal
17	Canvasback
18	Redhead
19	Ring-necked Duck
20	Greater Scaup
21	Lesser Scaup
22	Stelle's Eider
23	Spectacled Eider
24	King Eider
25	Black Scoter
26	Long-tailed Duck
27	Bufflehead
28	Common Goldeneye
29	Hooded Merganser
30	Ruddy Duck
31	Northern Bobwhite
32	Ruffed Grouse
33	Sharp-tailed Grouse
34	Greater Prairie-Chicken
35	Willow Ptarmigan
36	Gray Partridge
37	Ring-necked Pheasant
38	Pied-billed Grebe
39	Horned Grebe
40	Red-necked Grebe
41	Eared Grebe
42	Rock Pigeon
43	Eurasian Collared-Dove
44	Common Ground-Dove
45	White-winged Dove
46	Mourning Dove
47	Yellow-billed Cuckoo
48	Black-billed Cuckoo
49	Common Nighthawk
50	Chuck-wills-widow
51	Eastern Whip-poor-will
52	Chimney Swift
53	Ruby-throated Hummingbird
54	Clapper Rail
55	Virginia Rail
56	Sora
57	American Coot
58	Yellow Rail
59	Sandhill Crane
60	Black-necked Stilt
61	American Avocet
62	American Golden-Plover
63	Pacific Golden-Plover
64	Killdeer
65	Upland Sandpiper
66	Bar-tailed Godwit
67	Marbled Godwit
68	Long-billed Dowitcher
69	American Woodcock
70	Wilson's Snipe
71	Wilson's Phalarope
72	Red Phalarope
73	Red-necked Phalarope
74	Spotted Sandpiper
75	Willet
76	Ruddy Turnstone
77	Red Knot
78	Stilt Sandpiper
79	Red-necked Stint
80	Buff-breasted Sandpiper
81	Dunlin
82	Baird's Sandpiper
83	White-rumped Sandpiper
84	Least Sandpiper
85	Pectoral Sandpiper
86	Western Sandpiper
87	Semipalmated Sandpiper
88	Long-tailed Jaeger
89	Parasitic Jaeger
90	Pomarine Jaeger
91	Ivory Gull
92	Sabine's Gull
93	Laughing Gull
94	Franklin's Gull
95	Ring-billed Gull
96	Herring Gull
97	Glaucous Gull
98	California Gull
99	Slaty-backed Gull
100	Least Tern
101	Black Tern
102	Forster's Tern
103	Arctic Tern
104	Red-throated Loon
105	Pacific Loon
106	Common Loon
107	Yellow-billed Loon
108	Wood Stork
109	Anhinga
110	Double-crested Cormorant
111	American White Pelican
112	Brown Pelican
113	American Bittern
114	Black-crowned Night-Heron
115	Little Blue Heron
116	Tricolored Heron
117	Snowy Egret
118	Green Heron
119	Western Cattle Egret
120	Great Egret
121	Great Blue Heron
122	White Ibis
123	Glossy Ibis
124	Black Vulture
125	Turkey Vulutre
126	Osprey
127	Swallow-tailed Kite
128	Mississippi Kite
129	Northern Harrier
130	Sharp-shinned Hawk
131	Cooper's Hawk
132	American Goshawk
133	Red-shouldwered Hawk
134	Broad-winged Hawk
135	Swainson's Hawk
136	Red-tailed Hawk
137	Ferruginous Hawk
138	Eastern Screech-Owl
139	Snowy Owl
140	Great Horned Owl
141	Burrowing Owl
142	Barred Owl
143	Short-eared Owl
144	Belted Kingfisher
145	Red-naped Sapsucker
146	Red-headed Woodpecker
147	Rd-bellied Woodpecker
148	Downy Woodpecker
149	Hairy Woodpecker
150	Pileated Woodpecker
151	Northern Flicker
152	Crested Caracra
153	American Kestrel
154	Olive-sided Flycatcher
155	Western Wood-Petee
156	Eastern Wood-Pewee
157	Acadian Flycatcher
158	Alder Flycatcher
159	Willow Flycatcher
160	Least Flycatcher
161	Dusky Flycatcher
162	Western Flycatcher
163	Eastern Phoebe
164	Say's Phoebe
165	Great Crested Flycatcher
166	Western Kingbird
167	Eastern Kingbird
168	White-eyed Vireo
169	Bell's Vireo
170	Yellow-throated Vireo
171	Blue-headed Vireo
172	Plumbeous Vireo
173	Philadelphia Vireo
174	Warbling Vireo
175	Red-eyed Vireo
176	Loggerhead Shrike
177	Canada Jay
178	Blue Jay
179	Black-billed Magpie
180	American Crow
181	Fish Crow
182	Common Raven
183	Carolina Chickadee
184	Black-capped Chickadee
185	Tufted Titmouse
186	Horned Lark
187	Bank Swallow
188	Tree Swallow
189	Purple Martin
190	Northern Rough-winged Swallow
191	Barn Swallow
192	Cliff Swallow
193	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
194	Golden-crowned Kinglet
195	White-breasted Nuthatch
196	Brown-headed Nuthatch
197	Red-breasted Nuthatch
198	Blue-gray Grantcher
199	House Wren
200	Winter Wren
201	Sedge Wren
202	Marsh Wren
203	Carolina Wren
204	European Starling
205	Gray Catbird
206	Brown Thrasher
207	Northern Mockingbird
208	Eastern Bluebird
209	Mountain Bluebird
210	Townsend's Solitaire
211	Veery
212	Swainson's Thrush
213	Hermit Thrush
214	Wood Thrush
215	American Robin
216	Dusky Thrush
217	Cedar Waxwing
218	House Sparrow
219	Sprague's Pipit
220	Evening Grosbeak
221	House Finch
222	Purple Finch
223	Common Redpoll
224	Red Crossbill
225	White-winged Crossbill
226	Pine Siskin
227	American Goldfinch
228	Lapland Longspur
229	Chestnut-collared Longspur
230	Snow Bunting
231	Grasshopper Sparrow
232	Chipping Sparrow
233	Clay-colored Sparrow
234	Field Sparrow
235	Lark Sparrow
236	Lark Bunting
237	Dark-eyed Junco
238	White-throated Sparrow
239	Vesper Sparrow
240	LeConte's Sparrow
241	Seaside Sparrow
242	Nelson's Sparrow
243	Savannah Sparrow
244	Baird's Sparrow
245	Henslow's Sparrow
246	Song Sparrow
247	Swamp Sparrow
248	Spotted Towhee
249	Eastern Towhee
250	Yellow-breasted Chat
251	Yellow-headed Blackbird
252	Bobolink
253	Western Meadowlark
254	Eastern Meadowlark
255	Orchard Oriole
256	Bullock's Oriole
257	Baltimore Oriole
258	Red-winged Blackbird
259	Brown-headed Cowbird
260	Brewer's Blackbird
261	Common Grackle
262	Ovenbird
263	Worm-eating Warbler
264	Louisiana Waterthrush
265	Northern Waterthrush
266	Golden-winged Warbler
267	Blue-winged Warbler
268	Black-and-white Warbler
269	Nashville Warbler
270	MacGillivray's Warbler
271	Mourning Warbler
272	Kentucky Warbler
273	Common Yellowthroat
274	Hooded Warbler
275	American Redstart
276	Cape May Warbler
277	Cerulean Warbler
278	Northern Parula
279	Blackburnian Warbler
280	Yellow Warbler
281	Chestnut-sided Warbler
282	Pine Warbler
283	Yellow-rumped Warbler
284	Yellow-throated Warbler
285	Prairie Warbler
286	Black-throated Green Warbler
287	Canada Warbler
288	Summer Tanager
289	Scarlet Tanager
290	Western Tanager
291	Northern Cardinal
292	Rose-breasted Grosbeak
293	Black-headed Grosbeak
294	Blue Grosbeak
295	Lazuli Bunting
296	Indigo Bunting
297	Dickcissel