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Bohemian Waxwing: This photograph of a
Bohemian Waxwing, shot in January 2008, remains John Kendall’ s
favorite of all the photographs shot during his Big Year, not only because
of the extreme rarity of this species in Indiana--until Kendall located the
bird, it had not been seen in the state for 15 years--but also because it
was the first really significant species caught by his new digital camera.
“The initial success and excitement with photographing this bird prompted me
to bird more often, find more new rare birds in the winter, and eventually
became a springboard for positioning myself towards a Big Year,” he said. As
Kendall noted earlier this month at a presentation on his Big Year at the
Nature Center at Indiana Dunes State Park, photographing unusual birds is an
essential part of documenting them for the Rare Birds Committee of the
Indiana Audubon Society.
(Photo provided by John Kendall)
By KEVIN NEVERS
For most people, even confirmed lovers of birds, it’s enough
to be able to recognize a cardinal’s song of a morning or the dove’s lament,
to know that the little brown job at the feeder is some kind of sparrow, to
celebrate the first robin of the spring or the first junco of the fall.
Then there are the hard-core birders, who can distinguish a
Parasitic Jaeger from a Pomarine Jaeger at half a mile and the Chipping
Sparrow’s insectoid buzz from a Worm-eating Warbler’s (something even the
Chipping Sparrow can’t do). Not to put too fine a point on it, these folks
are obsessive, and not only in the hours they’ ll
spend in the field--however foul the weather--or the hundreds of miles
they’ll drive, just for a glimpse of this or that rara avis. They’re also
compulsive listers, who tick off like so many notches on their binoculars,
in meticulously maintained spreadsheets, the number of species they’ve
observed over the course of their lives, in North America, in Indiana, in
Porter County, in their own backyards.
And then, finally, there’s Valparaiso birder John Kendall. In
2008 Kendall set himself the task of identifying as many species as he could
in the state in a single calendar year. Birders call this particular form of
madness a Big Year, and madness it is, since a Big Year birder must be
willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice after learning of a
sighting, drive possibly the length of the state, wade through swamp or
trudge through thicket, in pouring rain or blistering heat, and then at last
hope that the bird hasn’t yet flown the coop.
Kendall’ s target:
308, the record set in 2002 by Jeff McCoy--“Magic”
McCoy to his colleagues, for his truly spooky gift of finding, year after
year, the rarest of the rare.
Kendall’s remarkable achievement: 312, a new record and one
likely to stand for some time, not only because a challenger would be forced
to duplicate Kendall’s own Odyssean toils but because so much depends on the
vagaries of the birds themselves.
As Kendall noted earlier this month, when he told the story
of his Big Year at a well-attended program at the Nature Center at Indiana
Dunes State Park (IDSP), the new record depended partially on the
cooperation of birds almost never, or never at all, seen in the State of
Indiana--like Western Tanager, Fork-tailed Flycatcher, Red Phalarope,
Spotted Towhee, and Varied Thrush--as well as on timely irruptions of
species like Snowy Owl and White-winged Crossbill.
Yet 12 months ago, in March 2008, Kendall’s Big Year was
still more a thought-experiment than it was a deliberate decision. In fact
he had tried one once before, in 2006, and actually hit the “magic number in
Indiana of 300, the litmus test,” but the Rare Bird Committee of the Indiana
Audubon Society in the end chopped it to 299 after disallowing his
California Gull.
So Kendall, knowing the work involved in a Big Year and not
willing publicly to commit himself to one until he had reason to think it
might prove successful, backed himself into the project gradually. “People
look at you and ask, ‘Are you doing a Big Year?’ And you say, ‘No, not
really.’ But you’re putting yourself in position for a Big Year the whole
time. You do everything you can before you declare your candidacy.”
What Kendall did do is have a spectacular winter, beginning
with the Bohemian Waxwing which he located in January at the former site of
the Green Tower at IDSP, not only the first bird of this species observed in
Indiana in 15 years but the first ever personally observed by Kendall in the
state. He followed it with a string of other great birds: a Brant in
Rockport, a convenient Barn Owl in LaGrange County, a Ross’ Goose in Benton
County.
The turning point, though, was May, Kendall said, when he had
a colossal run of eight tough birds in a single day, starting with a White-rumped
Sandpiper at the increasingly legendary McCool Basin at the intersection of
U.S. Highway 6 and McCool Road in Portage, and ending many hours and 250
miles later with a White-faced Ibis and a Glossy Ibis at Cane Ridge and a
Fish Crow at Twin Swamps.
After that day the gloves were off and everyone in the
birding community soon learned that Kendall was pursuing a Big Year and
could use a hand. “I’d get a call on the cell but my wife’s got dinner on
the table,” he remembered. “And then I’m out the door and she’s wondering
‘Where did he go?’”
Where did he go this time, that is. For the more birds
Kendall identified--his list totaled fully 275 by the end of June--the fewer
birds he would be able to identify in the closing months of the year. Birds,
moreover, are season specific. If you miss a Red Knot in the early fall or a
Black-legged Kittiwake in the late fall, it’s a bird gone forever, at least
forever for that year. Kendall calls it the 90/10 rule of thumb: you spend
10 percent of your effort to see 90 percent of the birds, and 90 percent of
your effort to see just 10 percent of the birds.
But Kendall had a lot of help. Over the course of the year he
got tips from McCoy, the current record holder; Ken Brock, the dean of
Northwest Indiana birders; Brad Bumgardner, the interpretive naturalist at
IDSP; Brendan Grube, an expert on Lake Michigan birding; even a Chesterton
Tribune reporter, who happened to stumble on a Snowy Owl one afternoon at
the U.S. Steel impoundment at the far west end of Miller Beach in Gary.
And in one extraordinary instance of camaraderie, Lee
Sterrenburg not only called Kendall in July to tell him of a White Ibis at
Goose Pond Fish & Wildlife Area in Greene County, he staked out the bird for
the five hours it took Kendall to make the drive, keeping him updated on its
movements by cell and then by two-way radio. Kendall located and
photographed the bird in flight only seconds before it disappeared.
Kendall tied McCoy’s record of 308 on Nov. 17, with the Snowy
Owl, after fighting traffic and snow and then running the length of the
mile-long beach in under seven minutes, to get a view of it just before all
light had faded. Kendall broke the record on Nov. 24, with a White-winged
Crossbill in Furnessville. He extended it to 310 on Nov. 28, with a Red
Phalarope off the Green Tower site; and extended it again to 311 on Dec. 15,
with a Spotted Towhee in Ogden Dunes, appropriately located first by McCoy.
And he ended the year at 312 on Dec. 30, with a Varied Thrush in Marshal
County.
Not just a Big Year but an enormous one, requiring logistical
convolutions, a knife’ s
point balance of business and pleasure, scads of planning, the modern
marvels of wireless communications and Internet postings, and a heck of a
lot of luck. Kendall also made 18 separate trips to the Deep South of
Indiana for birds impossible to see in the northern tier of the state--on
six of which he came up empty--yet he had the advantage too of living in
Valparaiso, with its easy access to the lakefront, which tends to funnel
birds into the region on their migratory wanderings. “I was a fixture last
year on the lake,” he said. “But you have to be.”
Kendall admitted that a birder can get preoccupied with
numbers during a Big Year. Yet the series of photographs with which he
illustrated his presentation at the Nature Center, taken during the Big Year
of 2008, go a long way to proving that Kendall is no less a lover of nature
than he is a lister of birds, including a stirring piece of a sunrise at
Kankakee Sands in Newton County and a National Geographic-quality shot of a
Red Fox holding in its mouth the remains of an American Kestrel holding in
its mouth the remains of a vole.
Bumgardner, who introduced Kendall at the Nature Center,
recalled someone’s recently asking Brock how many birds were seen in Indiana
in 2008. Brock answered that question with a question of his own: “Well, how
many birds did John see?”
Posted 3/25/2009
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