Ken Brown and Bruce LaBar joined me in McAllen, TX for a 9-day birding adventure, and headed back home yesterday. We had a great time, saw lots of birds, places and stuff, and overall rocked the valley. You can follow my birding notes most days on the Ed’s Birding Notes tab on the Bird Banter website. The guys were also gracious enough to record a podcast episode after our last full day of birding, and it is now published as episode #46 and you can listen where ever you get your podcast feeds, or on the Bird Banter website where there are links to Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify feeds, or you can just listen right there.
Stay tuned, as today I met with Ryan Rodriguez, a 12-year old birder from McAllen and his Dad to record an episode. I had a blast meeting him, hope to get out birding with him while I’m here and plan on publishing that episode later this week.

You can find photos from this trip on my flickr album.

A bit over a week until the ABC contingent descends on the valley to see the specialty here and have fun birding together.

Good birding. Good day!

As I left the University Place library when they finally kicked us out at closing time after our Big Year party, the librarian commented to me that she couldn’t remember a group having such an obviously good time as we did! Luckily she was smiling when she said it.

2019 was a great year for ABC’ers. Many of you attended our festivities and told about your year or showed your 5 best photos from 2019. We had many goodies provided by members, too, and Carole Breedlove brought some bird books to give away as she continues to try to tame our huge collection.

To start out, a slide was shown of Bruce LaBar (#1 in Pierce County) and Ken Brown, taken by Ed Pullen yesterday, from Texas, where they were shown in big winter coats complaining about the unseasonal cold snap. They all sent in their 2019 photos, but they received no sympathy for being in Texas! Ed is expecting some ABC’ers in February, so they were scouting an itinerary for that. We kept the boys’ image up while announcements were made of upcoming meetings.

We mentioned Bud Anderson’s FRG retirement and had a card for those who know him to sign.

Speaking of Ken’s diabolical quizzes, one of the photos he sent was titled, “Find the Bird.” Sure enough, there was no obvious bird in the picture, but as soon as the photo appeared, I started hearing whispers of “pauraque” from the group. This is a sharp group that can see pauraques instantly!

We had some great Big Year reports including Tahoma Audubon’s 50th Anniversary Big Year, where many of us “shared” our reports with TAS. The final report will be posted on their website in the near future, but preliminaries included birds from Australia, Colombia, Chile, Morocco, Tanzania, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand, Panama, Hong Kong, and many states in the U.S. A pretty fun way to do a big year! New presenter Jane said it was the TAS Big Year that made her start her own, and we really enjoyed her great photos, starting with her favorite, the Bald Eagle.

Starting off the Big Year reports, I tooted my own horn by saying my Big Year number was 4: In Chile, my 4th total eclipse and my 4th and last Avocet of the world! I showed the write-up in the November ABA Birding magazine detailing that.

We read Ed Pullen’s Big Year report of birding in Cambodia, Thailand, and Washington. Then we started pulling people up for theirs. One highlight was Bryan Hanson’s report, with Ryan Wiese’s input, which included how to use eBird to find out what birds you still needed for any year and where to get them. Bryan and Ryan used this to good effect this year.

One highlight was Blair Bernson’s great photo of the sadly famous Ross’s Gull which he clicked right before the criminal Bald Eagle murdered it, witnessed by many birders.

We really enjoyed Brian Pendleton’s photos from Washington, Portugal, and Spain. He had mentioned he might come to the meeting, but unfortunately got tied up in Seattle. His photos were actually clicked by his companion, Darshell, but they were definitely his sightings. He was #10 in the state for 2019. He still gets around with a little help from his friends, but can no longer hold a camera. We wish him many more birds!

As usual, we were treated to Heather Voboril’s great PowerPoint with some of her exciting travels to the other side of the world. Carol Breedlove described her worst ever guide in Guiana, and she’s had dozens, if not hundreds, of guides in her world travels. Willettes Faye, Carol, Laurel, and I also showed our stuff.

Wayne Sladek introduced a scary story about his travels in the far east where he found more birds kept in cages and being sold in markets, than in the wild. Jon Anderson came up from Olympia to give his report, one that many of us had been following on his blog, and enjoyed his droll humor as well.

Will Brooks continues to astound us with his knowledge and talent, including several firsts for Pierce County and glimpses of his travels with his girlfriend. We just hope he sticks around now that he’s a senior at UPS.

More photos were shown by Jerry and Clarice, including that really funny steam-punk portrait of Clarice with the loupe attached to her eye. Eric Dudley and Mary Kay Elfman, as well as Joe and Maggie Tieger showed their usual professional quality photos. John Riegsecker spared us his usual scary prey-and-poop pics and showed us some birds with charm for a change. Vicki Biltz continued an underlying Spain theme with her very sophisticated bird portraits. Kathleen Miller and Pat Damron showed their professional photography skills, as usual.

All the Spanish birds have made me want to go to Spain. Stay tuned!

What a great evening! Thanks to all and good luck in 2020!