The Carden Challenge - a not-so-brief summary

This past weekend I participated for the second time in The Carden Challenge.

This is a 24 hour birdathon whereupon teams of four try to identify as many bird species as possible.  In preparation for my first year last year, I had crammed using the website Dendroica to learn bird songs.  At the time, I could have told you what a blue jay sounded like but a meadowlark was outside my repertoire.  In other words, my knowledge of bird songs was very limited.

After studying several hours per day for about a month, I was able to add over a hundred birds to my songbook.  And it all proved to be worth it as our team managed to locate 112 species of birds - most of them by sound alone.  We took first place in the recreational birders category and managed to get more species than some teams in the competitive category.

This year, the organizers of the Challenge wanted to incorporate a little biodiversity into the event and so added a third category - Critters.  In addition to birds, participating teams in this category were to also identify as many species as possible in mammals, dragonflies/odonata (odes for short), butterflies/lepidoptera (leps for short) and amphibians&reptiles/herptiles (herps for short).

Our team were enthusiastic about this new category.  We were decent enough with the birds and had some members with some experience in the other areas.

Only one other team signed up to do the Critters - the team was absolutely loaded.  They had three experts in birds, herps, dragonflies and butterflies with a multitude of years of experience.

We had one member doing the dragonflies and butterflies with 3 years of experience, I just learned my frogs and snakes last year and am still learning bird songs of some relatively common birds.  A third member has been birding for just 3 years and had no experience or interest in any of the other categories.  Our fourth was the only team member with any decent amount of experience in birds and herps and some limited experience in butterflies.

All this to say we were going to be blown out of the water by the other team.  We figured on placing second but at least wanted a respectable representation.

At the wrap-up dinner, in a room filled with exhausted participants, many of whom had worn the same clothes for 24 hours, the final tally was done.  Shockingly, it was our team that was awarded first place in the Critter Category with 8 more points than the other team.  The jaws dropped on the other team - disbelief that this dream team should lose to us?  Or was it astonishment that we should have done so well?

Later when we were talking with them to try to figure out how we beat them, we learned that a clerical error on their part meant that they had missed out on 10 points.  So we lost......by only 2 points!  And we really proved ourselves!

We identified 115 birds, beating the other team by 4.  In fact, we could have got more but with half an hour left, we had already beaten our record of 112 from the previous year.  We had one definite and two probable birds that we could have easily found in that half hour but decided not to.  We didn't want to raise the bar too high for next year.  

We missed getting a turkey which I had heard but no one else on the team had so we couldn't count it.  The barred owl on Victoria Road just did not co-operate as well as the clay-coloured sparrows which were abundant but not when we were looking for them.  The yellow-throated vireo was singing robustly just 15 minutes before we got to the location whereupon it disappeared so we never got that one either.

We got 11 mammals, beating the other team by 4.  Not sure whether they considered bats but we did so were able to get a brown bat.  Driving home at 11 pm, a creature sitting in the middle of the road turned out to be a porcupine.  Just 10 yards further, was maybe a raccoon?, maybe a skunk?......nope it was a juvenile porcupine.  Nice to see the family together.  Closer to home, a raccoon peered at us from the side of the road.

We got 10 herps and were beaten by 7 by the other team.  They managed to get 6 snake species in one location; we searched and searched but came up with only two - a garter snake and a water snake.  We did well with frogs and got 2 out of 3 expected turtles but really busted on those snakes and had no time to look for salamanders.

We got 25 dragonflies and 25 butterflies - they got 26 of each - them with their 2 experts and us relying on our member with three years experience.  She really worked hard!

So we had a good time and we were unbelievably successful.  And we were swimming in food.  The other three members each brought enough food to feed all four of us.  I had provided the housing and a bottle of wine for Friday night and breakfast materials for Saturday morning.  We used the beds and wine but not the food, opting to hit the road for the dawn chorus and to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches provided by our ode/lep identifier.

We are already planning for next year.  We will be better prepared by having scouted out good spots for salamanders.  Every spot I had thought would be good ended up being too dry thanks to this drought that we are having.  We may also set up some snake boards in different areas.  One property owner has already offered her land as a possible spot for us to set them up.

The route that I had developed based on last year's birdathon and dragonfly counts worked pretty well but needs some tweaking.  We lost almost an hour chasing a phantom bird (Kirtland's warbler) that only one team was able to find.  We ended up driving Alvar Road East (between Wylie Road and Victoria Road) four times on Saturday morning - way way too often for a road that is labelled as "Use at your own risk".  Once would have been enough.  Other than that, there was very little backtracking or running over the same road multiple times which had been our major weakness last year.

I have to say it truly was a fun experience BUT probably the most valuable thing to come out of it is the improvement to my knowledge of the area.  I'd been picking the brains of a local birder well known in the area since November, trying to find out where a bank swallow can be located, is it likely that a tennessee warbler will be seen here, how does the song of a vesper sparrow sound different to the song of a song sparrow.  I'd been avidly reading the listings of nature sightings hoping to gain information on where to find more critters.  And I'd been talking to locals to find out what was out there.

In fact, I've learned so much about the area that I had my lunch paid for last Wednesday by a friend and much better birder who was picking MY brain for locations of birds.

I've learned that frog choruses, with the exception of the spring peepers, will often stop as you pull over to the shoulder of the road but if you wait long enough, they will start up again.  I have explored locations for snakes and ponds for turtles.

And now, when I drive down the road, I am hearing and seeing more than I ever had before.  That bird on the wire isn't just a bird but a kestrel.  The kingfishers like to hang out on this particular wire and the chorus frogs can be found in this pond but it's mink frogs in that one.  Instead of the frog chorus being one overwhelming song, I can now pick out the leopard frog and the bullfrog, the wood frog and the tree frog.  There are ponds which are good for common green darners and others that are good for elfin skimmers - both dragonflies.  Butterflies tend to be just about anywhere but there is one particular field which is good for finding the baltimore checkerspot - our expert found, and was able to add to our tally, a caterpillar of this butterfly.

And so my appreciation for the area, which had already reached a pretty substantial level, has grown by leaps and bounds.

And I am grateful to my friend for that first invitation to join her team for the Carden Challenge last year.