269 down, 96 to go

Days, that is.

Believe it or not, fewer than 100 days remain in 2015. For normal people, this is the time of year when thoughts turn to planning for the holidays, cleaning out gutters in advance of autumn rains, and dumping that lame quarterback off your fantasy football team, because he is sucking like a Hoover and a Dyson put together. For others, namely me, this is the time of year when desperation starts to set in.

You see, early in the year, every tree offers the promise of a new bird to find. Even well into the summer, we could drop into a new area and rack up at least half a dozen new birds, maybe more.

Right now, however, there exist only maybe 20 more bird species that we can realistically expect to find this year, with about another 30 or so that are possible but unlikely. These are spread around the entire country, with many of them appearing like Brigadoon, out of the fog for a day and then gone again for many years.

Tantalizingly, several of these have been around all year, or were here in spring migration, but we missed them. Now is our last chance, as we’re just running out of time! We either need to find a way to slow down the calendar, or have a run of amazing luck.

Some of that luck started this week. Reports surfaced of a Red-throated Pipit in Marin County. American Pipits are onomatopoeic, as they fly around spastically shouting, “pip-it! pip-it!” . This Red-throated fellow, however, only shouts “pip” and he’s not from America. Typically, he lives in Europe or Asia, so maybe this is how one translates “pip-it” into German or whatever? Anyway, with prompting and assistance from our friend, Alex, we spent a morning at the reservoir where the bird had been reported, and managed to track it down for bird #658 on the year.

What’s up next? Right now, we are outside of Chicago, spending the weekend chasing after the cursed Black-billed Cuckoo (again), as well as a few others. Then, we take a short jaunt down to south Texas (again), this time for a special tour to find a special little owl.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!