A Big Year in a Small Space
200 species, 365 days, 1 location.
T-minus four days to the start of my first Big Year! I’ve always wanted to do some sort of birding marathon, but without the time away from family, carbon footprint, and maxed-out credit cards.
Introducing the Plummer’s Hollow 200
I’m calling 2023 the Plummer’s Hollow 200. It’s a Big Year focused solely on the birds of a single location: https://ebird.org/pa/hotspot/L3330516, the Plummer’s Hollow eBird hotspot. Much of the hotspot has been in my family since 1971, and we have been birding it since we were children. So why does Plummer’s Hollow need a Big Year?
What’s changed in the last decade is the way we go about finding and identifying birds. We now have vast audiovisual resources at our disposal (Birds of the World; Macaulay Library; Xeno-Canto), and relatively affordable technologies to help us find more species. So part of the idea for this big year involves the fancy equipment that is going to help my collaborators and me detect not only the birds residing in Plummer’s Hollow but also those passing through and over it. Here I’m talking about nocturnal flight call monitoring as well as the wonders of ultra-high-magnification digital cameras, and hopefully other gear I can pick up before spring migration really kicks in.
Why 200?
So what’s the big deal with 200 species? Well, it is a good round number, for one. In birding terms it is a modest number, but when applied to a single hotspot in a single calendar year in a state like Pennsylvania, 200 is a very tough challenge. More so since we have almost no wetland habitat to rely on; most of our waders and ducks we pick up in flyover, often at night. Indeed, thanks to the nocturnal flight-call antenna, which I erected in 2020 up in the field, the hotspot all-time total only first surpassed 200 in 2022. I expect it to rise by five to ten new species every year for the next few years until it captures the majority of fly-over migrants that vocalize at night.
Reaching 200 species in a single year means placing the hotspot in the top 5 Pennsylvania birding locations for 2023. In 2022, despite missing a couple months of night flight call data, we have logged in the mid 180s, around #16 for the state. In essence, just about every species that should be here—with a few notable exceptions—shows up in a given year. Finding out why this is so is part of the fun. Is there something special about this patch of woods, or could any random patch of Penn’s Woods, scrutinized enough, yield the same numbers? I have some ideas about this, but I’ll keep them under wraps until the appropriate time.
Who’s Gonna Go for This?
Instead of the hundreds or even thousands of birders scouring other areas, we have only a handful. But our handful are able to rely on intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny to anticipate the exact location and timing of elusive species. My mom, Marcia Bonta, is a retired nature writer who has kept a journal that includes bird records since 1971. She lives up on the mountain with my brother Dave, who is a poet and rambles across the property on a nearly daily basis. Meanwhile, I’m down here perched on the edge of town, watching avian comings and goings through the Gap.
I am hoping to draw in the support and expertise of birders and far and wide in this endeavor, particularly in signature events such as Big Day (World Migratory Bird Day) and the Christmas Bird Count. I am also hoping to help boost the prominence of Blair County and the conservation efforts of the venerable Juniata Valley Audubon Society.
Not Just Numbers
Plus, I’m trying to gather more qualitative and quantitative data about the 210-or-so species recorded so far in Plummer’s Hollow. While we already know the basics of their yearly activities—when they are here and what they are doing—we are lacking tons of specifics. Why are post-breeding Blackburnian Warblers from up on the mountain hanging out along the Little J in molt migration? Why are post-breeding Warbling Vireos from the Little J hanging out up on the mountain? Where, exactly, are the Rock Pigeons heading to in their daily commute to Sinking Valley?
And what, exactly, is up with the ravens? Record high numbers of the Common Raven are spending an inordinate amount of time doing non-essential tasks, often involving what looks like play, as well some surpassingly odd interactions with other species. The nocturnal mic has recently revealed that they are even active at night.
And so it goes for many of the common species: Worm-eating Warblers (state-high numbers: why?), Bald Eagles on Bald Eagle Creek, Red-breasted Nuthatches in the spruce grove, Peregrine Falcons hunting pigeons, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks nesting around the gate, and on and on. What are they doing on a daily basis, and why are they doing it? What other species do they interact with? Do they quarrel, or collaborate? I’ve got a million questions.
All of this goes toward amassing knowledge that might help bird conservation, and not only in Plummer’s Hollow. I’m a lifelong conservationist, and though I am amazed at how the commensals shape their lives around us, I’d also like to know how the most woodsy of the species can be better served by our habitat management strategies. I’ll tell you one thing: our decision to not log wild black cherries (or any other tree species: our property has a conservation easement from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy that prohibits the practice, and is gradually reverting to old-growth) or remove wild grape vines is part of the reason we get so many species in such high numbers.
What I’ll Write
I’ll cut to the point: what are you getting out of this? Primarily, a day-by-day written account of a Big Year.
Balcony Sits
First and foremost, I’ll be writing about my daily pre-sunrise sits on my balcony at the edge of the hotspot in Tyrone, which provides intimate glimpses of a set of a common species and their endlessly intriguing interactions with members of their own species and other species.
The sweeping view allows not only good accounting of the daily commutes of certain species to and from the town to Sinking Valley through the Tyrone Gap, up into Plummer’s Hollow, and up and down Bald Eagle Creek and the Little Juniata River, but also the major raptor (and Common Nighthawk!) flyway along Bald Eagle and Brush Mountain: dozens of Golden Eagles per day passing over in November, hundreds of Broad-winged Hawks kettling in September, and so forth.
Woods, Fields, Railroad, River
The hotspot contains our 648-acre Plummer’s Hollow Nature Reserve, which comprises most of the northeastern end of Brush Mountain, the westernmost ridge in the Valley and Ridge Province of the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania. Over ten miles of trails traverse diverse hardwood forest habitats and two unplowed fields.
It also encompasses a narrow stretch of Tyrone Gap, a gash in the ridge through which the Juniata River, the old Pennsylvania Main Line railroad, and Highway 543 all squeeze.
At the top (NW) end of the Gap is the paper mill town of Tyrone, and at the bottom (SE), Sinking Valley. Despite the noise and activity here, small patches of riparian habitat are key for certain species that don’t venture up into the mountain.
I’ll be out and about in it all on a nearly daily basis, scouring every nook and cranny: the where and when depend on the season. More specifically, on where the food is on a given day. You’ll hear plenty about all this.
Night Sky
The nocturnal microphone will go up on the garage roof no later than March 1.
After that, I’ll be picking up and examining the data every day or two all the way through the end of November, and providing an interpretation of what happened. I’ll share the sounds and spectrograms: heck, since many of these species go unidentified, maybe you can even help me id them!
Birds, the Universe, and Everything
I am a geographer-slash-philosopher by profession; my website has a good number of my academic publications. What this means for the Plummer’s Hollow 200 is some rumination about the deeper connections between people and birds (ethno-ornithology) that have been an interest of mine all my life. What do birds reveal about the nature of existence? If you’re not into that stuff, you will be able to blip over it, of course.
What Happens Next?
Substack told me I needed to write a first post, so this is it. I may do some more before Zero Hour approaches. When the Plummer’s Hollow 200 officially starts, I’ll be partaking of some adult beverages with my wife up in State College, but I’ll still be out for my first Balcony Sit of the New Year around 7 AM on 1/1 (Species #1 prediction: Common Raven) and a ramble over the mountain later on.
Minimum, I’ll be posting once a day here, though sometimes a day after the fact. There will always be links to eBird checklists, but beyond that, I’m not sure how I’ll be sharing all this. In any case, if you would like to subscribe, there is a button below, and please let others know. Any and all suggestions are welcome!
