2015 Backyard Big Year--January Update

So one month into my Backyard Big Year, and I'm at 48 birds for the year, including 33 photographed, and 21 sound recorded.

After the first week of birding, it got pretty cold, with several significant snowfalls.  Birds were few and far between.  Fortunately, I was able to get my 20 Bird Minimum Daily Requirement each day, and was able to add 10 new birds over the course of the rest of the month.

So my goal is to photograph 150 species and sound record the same number.  It's going to be a real challenge to get that done, but too early yet to really gauge what will be possible.  There were 113 species reported in my county in January, so I had 42% of those in my yard.  For the past three years, my county has reported from 251-268 species on eBird, so if I stay on this pace, I'll only be looking at 105-113 species in my yard by the end of the year.  Needless to say, I expect to do much better than that!

Highlights for January in my yard included 5 new species to my overall yard list--Great Black-backed Gull, Cackling Goose, American Black Duck, Gadwall, Common Merganser.  I would love to keep up that pace of new birds for the yard!

Check out the Backyard Big Year Blog for more info on my January birding, and stay tuned for more updates as I take the world of hard core birding to my 2.7 acre New Jersey yard!  In addition to the blog, you can follow the big year on Facebook and see the documentary shots for the photo big year on Flickr.  Backyard birding is fun!  Would love to hear how others are doing on their own backyard big years!