May is our favorite time of year as thousands of colorful, amazing birds make their way into northern Illinois. Last year we decided to enter the birdiest county contest for our county, Winnebago, which involved doing a 72 hour consecutive block of birding. (Of course, we didn’t bird for all that time, but any birds counted during that period by anyone in the county, counted.)
Unfortunately, nothing came of the contest but it was still a blast to search for birds all over the county. We ended up with 123 species and learned a lot about our local and migrating birds.
Socks came along last year for a successful search of sparrows
This year we will be doing it again, this time with no contest to enter, but instead a personal goal of 150 species. While it will be difficult to reach this goal, we know we can beat last year’s total.
We will be doing the count from Friday May 23rd to Sunday May 25th and will post our findings in the following days.
Last year’s 72 hour count:
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