Brant Festival Big Day!

April 9th was the Brant Festival Big Day competition. This year, the competition took a different form, as it was not officially attached to the Brant Festival. However, Rhys Harrison and Sandra Gray did a fantastic job organizing and setting it up, with 57 birders from 15 teams taking part. The weather was also very cooperative, and even an accident south of Ugly Dwarf Fields that caused delays and detours for most of the afternoon couldn't dampen spirits.

My team, The Stellar J's, made up of myself, Jeremy Gatten, Jamie Fenneman, and Jason Kimm, had a great time of it, taking advatage of the great weather and racking up a total of 114 species. We ended up losing about 45 minutes of birding (and never made it to Ugly Dwarf) because of the accident, but managed to laugh it off (I don't think our team actually stopped laughing between 3am and 5pm, I was very fortunate to have such a fantastic and fun team!) and pick up two new species for the day, one while stuck in traffic (Rufous Hummingbird) and one on the detour (American Kestrel).

As for the birding, our total of 114 was good enough to finish first overall, and Jeremy Gatten's eagle eyes pulled an adult Iceland Gull out from the masses at the Englishman River Estuary, which was voted Bird of the Day. We had a few notable misses (Hairy Woodpecker being the big one) and some tense moments when we thought we were also going to miss Tree Swallow and Northern Shoveler. We also ended up running very short on time, and arrived at our last destination, a revisit to Hamilton Marsh, with about five minutes left in regulation time. What a sight it must have been to see four birders with scopes running down the trail to the marsh, dodging the others on the trail without a look back. We made it down to the marsh with about 60 seconds left, and managed to pick up Cliff Swallow and Tree Swallow to end with our 114 (actually 115 minus Collared Dove).


Other highlights for the day (aside from the great company and camraderie) were an immature Glaucous Gull at French Creek, a breeding plumage Eared Grebe at Qualicum Beach, and huge numbers of scoters and loons. Notably absent were expected warblers (we had only 1 Orange-crowned Warbler and small numbers of Yellow-rumped Warblers).

Huge thanks again to Rhys and Sandra, and a special thank you to the rest of the Stellar J's for an incredible day!

Looking forward to next year!

Good birding,