Back in late 2019 I had no idea of the impending storm brewing in China and couldn’t imagine that within five months international travel and indeed most travel, would be banned for a year or more.
I was looking for a bird tour in late February/March and whittled down the possibilities to two; either remote and little visited areas of Borneo or Guyana and Suriname in northern South America. In the end I went for the latter which was a good idea, because as far as I can tell the Borneo trip didn’t go, whether that was from lack of bookings or cancellation due to the pandemic I don’t know.
So what’s this to do with Florida? I have paid a number of visits to the USA but my only time in Florida was limited to a few hours on the way to and way back from my first trip to Costa Rica in 1981. Florida has a number of bird species found nowhere else in the ABA area (USA, Canada and Greenland as defined by the American Birding Association) but all but one, the Florida Scrub-jay can be easily found in the Neotropics. But although I don’t make a habit of visiting the ABA area just to up my ABA list, whilst I was there I thought I might as well target the ABA ticks as well.
But the question was when to go, there were two bird species and one mammal, the bizarre Manatee, that I really wanted to see. If I went in the summer I could see Antillean Nighthawk, a bird that I have missed on all my trips to the Caribbean (as it doesn’t arrive on the breeding grounds until late April) and the Scrub-jay – but the Manatees would be well offshore in the warmer weather. If I went in the winter I could see Manatees and the Scrub-jay but not the Nighthawk. Margaret had no interest in going as she had lived in Florida for several years in her previous life, so I couldn’t turn it into a family holiday.
In the end I decided the best thing to do was to visit Florida for a few days on my way to Guyana this February and hope I could see the Nighthawk on a future visit to the Caribbean, so I planned for three and a half days birding in southern Florida.
The direct flight from Heathrow arrived in the late afternoon, which was of course, late evening UK time. All of the eastern cost of Florida encloses the Intracoastal Waterway. In fact this sheltered waterway can be navigated from Brownsville in Texas all the way up to Baltimore. When Margaret first visited the USA she lived on a 33ft yacht in which she journeyed all the way from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore.
Accommodation on these islands and on the outer banks of the lagoon is reserved for the ultra-rich. Initial driving in the USA is always problematic as you adjust to driving on the right (or is it wrong?) side of the road. But exiting the airport at dusk into a multilane highway system in the rush hour was always going to be a bit of a nightmare, but I soon found my rather shabby motel. I was later told this was the type of motel that you could book by the hour for whatever nefarious deeds that you had in mind, but that didn’t matter, it was a convenient place to rest. Due to the time difference it was only 2030 when I went to bed but I was away by 0430 the next day and on the road north.
I drove 88 miles north to Jonathon Dickinson State Park, which I had been told was a good site for the jay, but I arrived far too early. Whilst waiting for it to open I birded along the road seeing species like Palm Warbler (above), Pine Warbler and Myrtle Warbler – a species I’ve seen on Scilly in the UK in the distant past.
Another common species was Northern Mockingbird. Amazingly one of these turned up in Devon in the UK this February but we were in the middle of a Covid lockdown at the time. Some chose to break the rules but I stayed put until they were relaxed and visited just before Easter. This was the third British record of this species (almost certainly ship-assisted) but the other two weren’t twitchable and so it has generated a lot of interest. Unlike the individual in the photo the one in Devon had a normal shaped upper mandible! Postscript – after writing this earlier today I heard that the Mockingbird has left Devon and has been relocated an equal distance to the east of me in West Sussex!
Once in the park it only took about 30 minutes to find a pair of Florida Scrub-jays.
Originally considered one species the ‘Scrub Jay’, it has now been split into four with Island Scrub-jay only on Santa Cruz Island off California, California Scrub-jay in the westernmost Lower 48 and Baja California, Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay in interior western USA and central Mexico and this species which is confined to south-central Florida. Clearly there is a research program going on here as both birds were colour-ringed.
I spent some time looking around the rest of the park hoping to see a variety of birds, I had some success eg with this Anhinga but I was later to regret that I didn’t drive back south and go for the Manatees at West Palm Beach.
I had booked a boat ride on Lake Kissimmee, a few hours drive to the north, for 1500 so to allow plenty of time I set off early. I arrived with loads of time to spare and birded along the access road and around the dock for a couple of hours.
Eastern Meadowlarks and …
… Loggerhead Shrikes were easily seen along the access road …
… and lots of American Kestrels.
Along the shore of Kissimmee Swamp I saw …
… Great Blue Heron …
… and Wood Stork bathing in the hot sunshine. The former of these two birds is common throughout the Nearctic region but the Wood Stork is (outside of Florida and southernmost California) almost entirely Neotropical. However I already had the species on my ABA list as many years ago, circling over Miami after a trip to the Caribbean, I saw a flock out of the plane window!
It wasn’t just the herons and storks that were sunbathing in the hot temperatures, a flock of Ring-billed Gulls had all turned to face the sun and were panting in the high temperatures, either that or I had chanced on a Ring-billed Gull choral group! This species has turned up so regularly in the UK in recent years that it has been dropped as an official rarity. I’ve seen 22 in the UK and it could have been a lot more if I’d have put the effort in.
A Forster’s Tern perched on sign, another species I’ve seen in the UK but only four times.
White Ibis fed around the margins of the lake.
This is a widespread species in Central America and Mexico, the Caribbean and northern South America but in the ABA area its confined to the Gulf Coast, Florida and the coast north to the Carolinas.
The related Glossy Ibis is more widespread being found in many parts of the Old World from Europe to Australia, including these days, occasionally in the UK.
However in the Americas it is largely confined to a narrow strip from Maine to eastern Texas. As there is another closely related species, White-faced Ibis further west then it may be that Glossy Ibis is a relatively recent colonist of the New World.
Ubiquitous throughout the whole of the Americas is the rather ugly Turkey Vulture.
One of my first big twitches in the UK occurred in 1979 when I went down to Cornwall to see the UK’s first Belted Kingfisher which over wintered on the River Camel. This species can be sexed by presence (female) or absence (male) on a chestnut belt on the breast, which isn’t much help here as the breast is hidden.
There are four species in the family Anhingidae, the ones in Africa, the Orient and Australasia use those geographic terms along with the name Darter, however the one in the Americas takes its name from Brazilian Amerindian for ‘snake-bird’ – Anhinga. This group of birds differs from cormorants by their long necks which can be shot forwards at great speed to spear rather than grab fish.
Soon it was time to head out onto the water …
… earlier there had been a question as to whether the boat would go or not as I was the only person interested, but another couple had booked, so it was ok. The boat, a sort of hovercraft with a huge fan at the rear, could skim over all the marsh vegetation in a way no normal boat could, but it was mega-noisy hence the ear protection.
With my lifer (the jay) under-the-belt it was time to look for some of the species that makes visiting Florida essential for ABA birders, starting with Purple Gallinule.
Not to be confused with what used to be called ‘purple gallinule’ in the Old World and which is now treated as six species of ‘swamphen’, this bird is a colourful cousin of our Common Moorhen. I’ve seen it before in Texas and many times in the Neotropics but these were the best views I’ve ever had of it.
Another widespread bird that is only found in Florida outside of the Neotropics is the Limpkin. Limpkins have an unusual flight style in which the wing is usually held above the horizontal and the up-stroke is faster than the down-stroke.
Perhaps one of Florida’s most iconic birds is the Snail Kite, (once known in the States as Everglades Kite, but as it occurs as far south as Argentina it’s not a very appropriate name).
The kites were visible almost constantly whilst I was at the lake.
Males have this slate grey plumage – note the thin and highly curved bill …
… that has evolved to winkle apple snails out of their shells.
This Snail Kite with a very broad supercillium and spotted breast is a juvenile. Females are similar but with a narrower supercillium and heavily streaked breast.
Other species commonly seen included Great Blue Heron …
… and Snowy Egret which differs from our Little Egret by its bright yellow iris and lores, yellow on the feet extending up the tarsus and even (as can be seen here) the tibia and more but shorter plumes on the head. There has been one record of the species in the UK, in Scotland in 2002, whilst there has been two records of Great Blue Heron both on Scilly (2007 and 2015) …
… however a most unexpected fact is that the ‘type specimen’ of American Bittern (ie the first one to be collected for scientific reasons) was shot in 1804 at Puddletown in Dorset, UK, just 15 miles from where I live.
I had the most wonderful views of American Bittern from the boat, I have seen this species before in the ABA area and the UK but never this close.
Another heron seen from the boat was Little Blue Heron, again this has been seen in Britain and Ireland, just the once in Co Galway in 2008. Of all the five American heron species seen in the UK and Ireland I’ve only seen two back home; Green Heron and American Bittern.
There were also a good number of Great Egrets on the lake. Whilst widespread throughout much of the world its only been the last 15 or so years that they have become regular in the UK. So far there’s no evidence that a New World Great Egret has made it to Britain but they are separable on bare part colouration and plumes during the breeding season and are probably a different species from the Old World ones (with the Australasian ones being a third species.)
There were other raptors around the lake, I usually have difficulty in identifying all the mid-sized American raptors because I mainly see them briefly when driving but here in the south the commonest species is Red-shouldered Hawk. This is an immature.
But there was no difficulty identifying this magnificent bird …
… I tend to associate Bald Eagles with boreal forests, so it was a bit of a surprise seeing two breeding pairs just a few degrees north of the tropics. I have previously seen them on the Oklahoma/Texas border but that was in winter.
I saw lots of other species from the boat from the ubiquitous Boat-tailed Grackle …
… to a terrapin with the wonderful name of Florida Red-bellied Cooter.
Of course no visit to a Florida wetland would be complete without views of Alligators, big ones …
… baby ones …
… and some very close views indeed.
There were a number of small waders out in the marsh. When I pointed them out to the boatman he replied that he ‘didn’t do peeps’ but closer views revealed them as Least Sandpipers mainly on account of the yellow legs.
One of the highlights of the boat trip was really close views of a nesting Sandhill Crane. This species is migratory over most of its range, wintering in southern USA and Mexico and breeding in the north from eastern Canada to eastern Siberia. However there is a resident population in Florida and Cuba.
The boatman convinced me that this sitting bird was used to the boats and didn’t move at all as we passed by.
Back on dry land there were a couple of Limpkin in a paddock close to the dock.
This ibis-like bird isn’t related to the ibises at all but to the cranes, rails and gallinules, thus its taxonomically closer to the Purple Gallinule above that to the White Ibis and Glossy Ibis shown earlier in this post.
After leaving the lake I stopped a few times along the access road seeing a range of species, Eastern Phoebe …
… Savannah Sparrow (I once saw an ‘Ipswich Sparrow’ a localised race of Savannah Sparrow, at Portland Bill in Dorset – first record for the UK) …
There were also a good number of Sandhill Cranes feeding in the fields.
Back in 2015 we went to Kearney in Nebraska to see the huge gathering of migrating Sandhill Cranes on the Platte River. In Florida I saw about 40 Sandhills, in Nebraska we saw 150,000!
From time to time I mention that this bird or the other has been ‘split’ ie is now treated as a full species when formerly it was treated as a subspecies. Of course the opposite happens, sometimes two species are found out to be a single species and are merged or ‘lumped’. This has happened since I went to Florida with the Northern and Southern Caracaras being lumped into Crested Caracara. The two former species were separated by the Amazon rainforest but as deforestation continues the two ‘species’ met and interbred. It’s likely this is a case of incomplete speciation, given another few tens of thousand years of continuous separation perhaps the speciation of the two forms would have been complete.
I headed back south, I didn’t find any motels in the area, indeed the one I had planned to stay at was in ruins after having been hit by a truck a few months earlier. I asked about motels at a gas station but was told I was ‘in the middle of nowhere’ and not to expect such things. I continued back south on the turnpike until tiredness and hunger took over so I stopped just outside Fort Pierce. The first motel I tried was mind-numbingly expensive but I found another at a more reasonable cost. Whilst checking in I told the receptionist I was heading down to West Palm Beach the following day to look for manatees when a guy queuing behind me said ‘no need to go all that way, there’s some just down the road from here, I saw them this morning’.
So what happened the next day and the two days after that will be the subject of my next post.
This post covers a couple of hours visit to a single site, the commercial salt pans at Punta Morales in north-western Costa Rica. As waders (or shorebirds as they are known in the Americas) have a universal appeal to birders I have dedicated an entire post to this short visit and have attempted to illustrate every wader seen plus a few of the terns. We visited some salt pans in this area in 1981, possibly the same place. Nearly all the species would have been lifers then, now none of them were, but I enjoyed seeing them just as much as I did the first time.
An early afternoon visit to the salt pans was most successful. Unfortunately we only had two scopes between us so initially it was a slow process getting onto all the waders. However as we walked around the pans we found we could get close enough to most birds for decent photos and indeed I think I managed to photograph every wader present.
Many birds were on the bunds between the pans, others were wading in the brine. This mediocre photo has been included as its the only photo I took of Grey (or Black-bellied) Plover, seen in the top right.
There were large numbers of Black Skimmers present. A not particularly appropriate name as all three species of skimmer show a similar black and white plumage and this is no more black than the other two. These aberrant terns feed by flying low over water with their long lower mandible just below the water’s surface (the so-called ‘unzipping the pond’), if the lower mandible encounters a prey item the upper mandible snaps shut to secure it.
With the skimmers was a small number of Royal Terns. Recent genetic work was shown that the African and American forms of Royal Tern have diverged sufficiently to be considered separate species, but as yet I haven’t heard of any reliable ways of separating them in the field, not has this discovery been taken up by mainstream world checklists.
At the back are three black-billed Cabot’s Tern’s named after American physician and ornithologist Samuel Cabot III. This is a recent split from the Old World Sandwich Tern, although the American checklist committees SACC and NACC have yet to ratify this (but the IOC and BOU has). In the foreground is a ‘Hudsonian’ Whimbrel. This larger, more strongly patterned, dark-rumped version of our Eurasian Whimbrel has been treated as a separate species by the BOU, but not by the IOC or other world checklists. As the BOU will adopt the IOC checklist as the basis of the British List as of 01/01/18 then we will lose this one from the British List (there have been a few records of this American form in the UK including along-stayer in Cornwall).
Most of the species of wader present have occurred as vagrants in the UK at some time or other (hence British birders interest in American waders) but one that hasn’t is Wilson’s Plover which has a more southerly distribution than most.
Also known as Thick-billed Plover this species breed from SE USA to Belize and the West Indies and winters as far south as Brazil.
Another species that has not made it to the UK is Marbled Godwit which has an interior distribution in North America and doesn’t make any of the major ocean crossings that seems a prerequisite for regular trans-Atlantic vagrancy. A single Whimbrel is the middle of the flock facing left.
Here Marbled Godwits can be seen with Black-necked Stilts, Stilt Sandpipers and a single Willet.
Marbled Godwits in flight, unlike the other three species of godwit they don’t show either white wing-bars or white rumps..
Yellowleg species were surprisingly scarce on this trip. perhaps they had already departed for their breeding grounds in North America. This is the Greenshank-sized Greater Yellowlegs. I saw my second UK Greater Yellowlegs in Hampshire in 2015 but Lesser Yellowlegs is much commoner, one stayed at our local patch for seven months from September 16 and eventually departed after I had left for Costa Rica in late March.
Closely related to the Old World Black-winged Stilt, the Black-necked Stilt of the Americas was common on the saltpans. There are four ‘black-and-white’ stilts worldwide differing only in the precise pattern of black and white on the head, neck and back and there is a good argument for lumping them all together.
Joining the Stilts, Godwits and Whimbrel in this photo is a single Stilt Sandpiper in the foreground and four Willets. This omnatopoeic bird surely consists of two species, Eastern and Western Willet (these are all Western Willets) and a proposal to split the two forms is being considered by the NACC currently, here is a summary taken from the proposal: The Willet (Tringa semipalmata) includes two broadly allopatric subspecies that exhibit morphological, ecological, vocal, and genetic differentiation. The eastern subspecies (T. s. semipalmata) breeds almost exclusively in saltmarshes and brackish coastline habitat along the Atlantic Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and certain localities in the Caribbean In contrast, the western subspecies (T. s. inornata) breeds in brackish and freshwater wetlands in the Great Basin as well as prairies in the north-western United States and southern Canada. The western subspecies winters along rocky habitat on the Pacific coast from the north-western United States south to Chile. While the two species may co-occur during migration and on certain wintering grounds, pair bonding occurs on breeding grounds which are allopatric between the two subspecies. For more see: http://checklist.aou.org/assets/proposals/PDF/2017-A.pdf
There were a number of Short-billed Dowitchers on the pans. This is a difficult bird to separate from the similar Long-billed Dowitcher (and no, bill length isn’t much help) especially if they are silent. Long-billeds are regular if scarce in the UK but Short-billeds are mega rarities, the one at Lodmoor, Dorset in 2012 was only the 3rd for the UK.
Here is a better portrait of one species that has appeared in the background in previous photos – Stilt Sandpiper, (not to be confused with the unrelated Black-necked Stilt at the back). A regular migrant in the Americas, this is a very rare species in the UK although I have seen three in Dorset or west Hampshire over the years.
Here a Ruddy Turnstone, a very common species in the New World and the Old, perches behind the New World Spotted Sandpiper.
The New World Semi-palmated Plover is very similar to our Ringed Plover. Small differences in the bill and facial pattern separate the two and of course there are the semi-palmations between the toes for those with very good scopes and perfect viewing conditions. But the best way to locate a vagrant Semi-P Plover is by call.
It’s now time to look at the smallest waders, the so-called ‘peeps’. This, a Semi-palmated Sandpiper, was by far the commonest.
Semi-P Sandpipers and a Semi-P Plover. with a single Least Sandpiper at the far right.
A flock of Semi-palmated Sandpipers beautifully reflected in the brine solution.
This flock of ‘Semi-P Sands’ is joined by a single Stilt Sand and a Semi-P Plover. Notice the bird in the far lower left, the long curved bill means that this is almost certainly a Western Sandpiper on route to Alaska or far-eastern Siberia. Relatively easy to separate in juvenile or in breeding plumages, winter plumaged adults can be very tricky. They winter further north than Semi-Ps, a lot of them within the southern USA and they were much rarer than Semi-Ps in Costa Rica.
Perhaps the rarest bird at the pans and one that had never been recorded by Birdquest on their many trips to Costa Rica was this Wilson’s Phalarope.
There were relative few non-waders/terns at the pans but this Great Egret posed for its portrait. The taxonomy of the species isn’t settled either with the small far-eastern subspecies modesta probably deserving species status, whilst the New World alba differs from the Eurasian form in bare part colouration, breeding plumes and display.
As was always the case we didn’t have enough time to really study all the subtle features of these fascinating waders and soon it was time to leave the pans and head for Hacienda Solimar which will be the subject of the next post.
…. but we’ll end this post with a portrait of the world’s smallest wader, the appropriately named Least Sandpiper.
It’s a bit late in the New Year to be reminiscing about Christmas but as usual I’m running late with blog updates, so here is a short account of our activities over the ‘Festive Season’.
Don’t we scrub up well! The first and only formal Christmas party we attended this year was on the 17th in Bournemouth with the Phoenix Organisation (formerly Nexus), the organisation through which Margaret and I met. I had been ill for about a week beforehand so we did little more than enjoy the meal, have a token dance and leave.
For Christmas we all went to Margaret’s daughter Anita and her husband John’s place in Maldon, Essex. Kara was already there, we arrived on the 22nd and Janis and Amber arrived on the 23rd. On Christmas Eve we all went for a rather chilly walk near Bradwell-on-Sea at the mouth of the Blackwater Estuary. L-R Kara, Amber, John, Margaret, Janis and Anita.
Birding-wise it wasn’t too exciting with just this flock of Brent Geese near the car park and a few common waders along the shore ….
…. but there was an interesting chapel built in 654 AD by Cedd a bishop from Lindisfarne in Northumbria using stone from an earlier Roman fort.
The rather sparse interior is still used for regular services.
Many houses and gardens near Anita and John’s house in Maldon were suitably (over) illuminated for Christmas ….
…. but we had to laugh at this illuminated snowman that appeared to be about to jump to its death …..
…. compounded by fact that the inflatable Santa below had already hung himself.
On Christmas morning it was time for the grand present opening ceremony. Janis looks particularly delighted with hers.
Amber was given some goggles that convert your mobile phone into a VR experience. Kara is clearly enjoying her sister’s present ….
…. and so for that matter, was her grandmother.
Having turned his double garage into a ‘man cave’, John was most pleased to receive this sign for Christmas.
For Christmas dinner we were joined by John’s sister Lois and her family for a slap-up feast in the ‘man-cave’. Clockwise from the left: Amber, Margaret, John, Anita, Lois, her husband Gavin, their son Lyle, Lyle’s girlfriend Heather, their daughter Shan, Janis and Kara. This must be the first year when I haven’t eaten any turkey over the whole Christmas period.
As they were almost hidden in the last photo here is a better shot of Lyle and Heather.
And here Shan assisting Janis’ with a selfie.
Usually after a large Christmas dinner everyone falls asleep during the Queen’s speech, but Anita kept us busy with a series of party games such as this ‘card blowing’ contest where the object was to get the card to balance on the edge of the table without falling to the floor – much harder than it sounds.
…. but one of the funniest games was the ‘twerking contest’. Small baubles were placed in a box with a hole and tied to your waist. The aim was to knock out as many baubles as possible just by hip action.
On Boxing Day morning I went to nearby Abberton Reservoir to see a drake Ring-necked Duck (on the left), a rare visitor from America.
I was pleased to see four Smew on the reservoir including this stunning drake. They occur occasionally as far west as Dorset but the majority of wintering Smew are found in the south-east of the UK.
This Ring-necked Duck probably hatched in Canada or the northern USA, the Smew in Scandinavia or Siberia and the Pochard from eastern Europe or western Russia yet all come together in one photo in Essex.
On the 27th we headed north to my brother’s in Derbyshire, an early start helped us to avoid the traffic. We stopped at my University friend Di’s place in Breedon-on-the Hill (centre of the photo with her husband Steve). Her daughter Hannah, husband Karl and daughter Mai were staying and it was great to see Hannah who I haven’t had a chance to speak to for many years and meet Karl and Mai for the first time.
Over five year’s ago Hannah’s dad, my University housemate Clive was tragically killed in a motorbike crash. I was surprised how like her father she now looks, which of course brought back how much I miss Clive.
I came to Beeley, a small village in the Peak District, in early December to see a Dusky Thrush, a very rare vagrant from eastern Siberia. The thrush was still there on so I took Margaret to see it.
The residents of Beeley have been praised by birders for their warm welcome, something that doesn’t always happen when a rarity is found in a residential area. The bird is now showing just outside the village and the number of birders arriving is much reduced but even so residents will probably be glad when it migrates in the spring.
There have been a reasonable number of Waxwings turning up this year, but very few have reached the south. We managed to catch up with one some ten miles to the north of Beeley but if we had got there five minutes earlier we would have seen a flock of 40!
On the way back to Poole on the 29th we detoured to see another vagrant thrush – a Blue Rock Thrush, a bird with a wide distribution from the Mediterranean to the far East. This beautiful bird has taken up residence in a housing estate at Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire and is using roof tops as a substitute for its usual rocky mountain or coastal cliff habitat.
A few birders are denigrating this bird, considering it an adult and therefore less likely to be a true vagrant, and saying wintering in the middle of the UK rather than the coast points to captive origin. These critics seem to mainly be twitchers who saw the Blue Rock Thrush on Scilly some 20 years ago and don’t want all these newbies catching them up – ie they are doing a bit of list protection. There is debate about its age, some consider it a first winter, and vagrancy can occur in adult birds and nobody criticised the Dusky Thrush because it was found in the middle of the country!
When the Blue Rock Thrush was seen from certain angles its lovely blue hue faded to a dark grey. As I said before twitching rarities in urban areas can be difficult, photographing a bird on someone’s roof is one thing but on their bedroom windowsill is a different matter entirely.
Now if Starlings were rare vagrants from Siberia then birders would go crazy for them, just look that blue sheen. But they were just considered something to photograph whilst we waited for the thrush to appear.
We did nothing more exciting than watch TV on New Year’s Eve. The planned boat trip around Poole Harbour on New Year’s Day was postponed to the 2nd so we paid a visit to Longham Lakes before the rain set in. The first quality bird of the year was this Great White Egret, one of three that are wintering at Longham. Once a true rarity, there has been a huge increase in numbers in the last few years and now they even breed in Somerset.
The 2nd was a much better day for our boat trip, kindly put on by our friends Mark and Mo Constantine, but compared to previous years there were relatively few quality birds in the harbour.
There was one last event that fits in with the broad definition of the ‘Festive Season’, the annual bird race. This year I opted to do the race with my three ringing trainees L-R Daniel, Ginny and Chris. I think it would be fair to say that my team has had less birding experience than the members of the other teams, but they did extremely well and we ended up with 117 birds seen/heard during the 12 hours of the race and actually came second out of the four teams participating.
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