Wisconsin also hosts an annual 7.5MR Challenge, so I'll have two nested circles to track. Here they are:
The large flags are public hotspots in eBird (blue for 5MR, orange for 7.5MR), and the small orange dots are all my personal locations. Some of the personal ones are incidental (like my lifer Connecticut Warbler behind a random parking lot, which I first heard from the road while in transit for my Green Big Day), but others I bird frequently and could warrant being turned into hotspots. Pretty nice variety of habitat in there - if I could add just one more spot to the 5MR circle, it would be the New Amsterdam Grasslands (AKA berrylands, AKA sparrowlands), but that's just at the top edge of the 7.5MR. Otherwise, I've got lake, river, marsh, bottomland forest, bluffs, and a little agriculture even in the 5MR, which represent nearly all of the habitat types in the county as a whole.
Last year, I ended up with 203 species inside my 5MR (of the total 238 that I saw in WI by bike, of which 219 were in La Crosse County), which reflects the local focus of most of my birding. I had 211 species in my 7.5MR circle, which would have been good for a tie for 5th place in all of Wisconsin (scroll down to the very bottom of the post), if I'd remembered to update my numbers at the end of the year! I'm not sure how many more I could have found within either circle if I'd tried - but this year I aim to find out!
It's fun to have a new challenge for the year and an additional fun, supportive online community to go along with it. The coordinator has also concocted a monthly challenge to keep us getting out there and birding regularly, even if it's not the birdiest month of the year, and even if my patch will never be able to compete (in terms of number of species) with one on the California coast. There are 330 members in the Facebook group now - I can't wait to see how many rarities we find in random neighborhood parks, now that we'll all be out birding in typically neglected spots!
Of course, I'll participate in the statewide Wisconsin Green Birding Challenge again, too, even if I don't leave my home county very often. The official results from last year haven't been announced yet, but it looks like my 238 species put me at the top of the pack - by only three species! (Ross Mueller is still the all-time champ with 243 species in 2016!)
Birding has been slow so far this year. My total (all green) is 28 species so far - 27 of which have been in my 5MR and the last was in my 7.5MR - despite having birded a fair bit in the past week or two. Birders throughout Wisconsin are noting low numbers and diversity this winter. Last year I found 23 species on January 1st alone - this year I had 8 at the same spot! Once spring arrives, though, things will really take off.
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| Even the typical winter birds, like this American Tree Sparrow, have been pretty sparse this year. |
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| Best bird so far this year is this Merlin - I've seen only 4 per year in the last couple of years, though I would be surprised if I missed it entirely this year. A heard-only Great Horned Owl was nice, too, as owls are surprisingly hard to find in my 5MR. |
Anyway, even though I'd intended this blog to be mainly for my Green Big Year, I wanted to post an update with my plans for this year. I'm not sure how much I'll blog this year - maybe only after Big Days or big trips. Maybe more often if I continue to have plenty of free time due to shutdown furlough, though....
