With my 2021 “Accidental Lapeer County Big Year” in the books, I headed into 2022 with my first every true birding ambition: I wanted to do a County Big Year in Oakland, Michigan. The idea of a Big Year at this point interested me greatly, and in 2020 I had followed the Michigan Big Year of Oliver Kew with some interest as he closed in on the previous record of 329, finally breaking it and ending the year with a staggering 335 species. That said, the idea of doing my own Michigan Big Year was an absurdity (oh the naivete). Working full-time as an Assistant Store Manager at ALDI in Lake Orion left me with a variable, limited-availability schedule and a fairly small budget for chasing. I was, simply put, unable to *reasonably* drop everything and travel across the state at the drop of a hat in the way that would be required to do my own Michigan Big Year. Maybe someday, but not anytime soon.
My compromise to being unable to do a Michigan Big Year was that I would do a County Big Year. This would allow me to more reasonably chase rarities on a local-level, and result in travel and chasing not eating into my budget to the extent that travelling across the state would require. Plus, in a logic that would later prove rather humorously ironic, looking at the list of Oakland County birding legends left me hoping that some of them would end up doing a Michigan Big Year. Among Oakland County’s ranks were birders like Scott Jennex and Bob Bochenek, both of whom had previously done state-wide Big Years where they finished as the top birders in the state for their respective years. It had been a little while since either had done a Big Year, and I figured – maybe, hopefully, I might get lucky and instead of intensively birding Oakland County they would spend their years crisscrossing the state, leaving me with less competition to hopefully manage to secure the #1 spot in the county for the year. I set my sights on the target of 220 species for the year – a challenging but achievable goal, and one that looking at past years would place me right at or around #1 for the year.
Don’t get me wrong, I think there are much more important aspects to doing a Big Year than being #1; it is a challenge first-and-foremost against one’s self – a competition with yourself to see what you can achieve. In my opinion, nothing challenges a beginning or novice birder to learn more about birds than doing a Big Year (in whatever capacity is “Big” to them), assuming they don’t allow themselves to be so overly consumed by watching the number tick up that they lose sight of what the number represents. (Okay, I’ll admit that I am rambling at this point, but I think it’s an important message to get across!) But, while there is more to it than the numbers and the competition, I *am* an inherently competitive person, and so the idea of being able to set my sights on the top spot for the county was an appealing one.
In order to hit my target of 220, as well as to secure the top spot in the county for the year, I knew I had to hit the ground running. In order to achieve this, I requested the first four days of the year off from work, and planned to kick things off with a New Year’s Day Big Day in Oakland County with my dad – who I managed to rope into driving for me so I would get to enjoy a day spent birding. We would meet early in the morning to try for Eastern Screech-Owl, Barred Owl, and Great Horned Owl, and then try to track down a few hopefully-continuing rarities like Snowy Owl before heading into southern Oakland County to spend the rest of the day picking up as many species as we could.
Our day began at a park that had become my main local patch – Orion Oaks County Park. Located off of Baldwin Road just a few miles from my apartment apartment, Orion Oaks is a gem of a park that I quickly fell in love with after moving to Lake Orion in November of 2021. Hosting a good mixture of fields, woods, and a small lake, Orion Oaks afforded us a number of promising targets. We arrived in the dark and headed out down the trail towards a spot where I frequently had Barred Owls in the morning, and shortly after reaching that spot we heard a few Barred Owls caterwauling. Before leaving we picked up our only House Finch of the day as well as 16 other species, kicking off the day nicely and departing just after dawn. We then spent some time unsuccessfully trying to find a Snowy Owl that had bene seen the previous day before heading to Great Lakes National Cemetery, where we notched Red-headed Woodpecker and Eastern Screech-Owl. Most of the rest of our day was spent on a loop that brought us to Kensington Metropark (for a host of ducks and woodland birds) and then over to the Detroit Zoo, where we snagged some overwintering Turkey Vultures but dipped on the resident Peregrine Falcons that hung out around the local water tower. All said and done, we ended the day at 46 species – a good start to my year.
With three days remaining in my “First Four”, on day two I woke up early and headed to Orion Oaks again, this time alone as my dad had to head back home to Lapeer County and go to work at his job as the Executive Director at Seven Ponds Nature Center – the place where I had finally fallen in love with birding the previous year. I spent each of these three days intensely birding Oakland County, and over the course of those 72 hours tallied another 25 species, bringing me to 71 for the year. I returned to work the morning of January 5th, and the next few days passed in relative quiet, during which time I added a Glaucous Gull, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and the aforementioned Peregrines during a few mornings or afternoons of light birding.
The tone of the year would irreversibly change on the morning of the 9th, however, when plans to do some pre-work birding with my dad were derailed by news of a Prairie Falcon in Macomb County. My dad and I raced there, and after a short time of looking the mob of birders present were able to relocate the bird, resulting in my first “Mega Rarity” of the year as my dad and I got excellent mid-distance views as the bird descended from it’s high perch on transmission tower towards the feeder of a nearby house, where it snagged an unfortunate Mourning Dove and spent some time feasting on it in a neighboring field. With this first rarity of the year as well as a few other birds added that day, I found myself at 78 species – and a crazy, insidious idea crept into my head – what if I tried to hit 100 species for the month of January?
Of course, hitting 100 species for January in Oakland county was near-if-not-fully impossible, and I had already ventured out of Oakland County in order to see that Prairie Falcon, so… I guess that settles it! Time to start making regular four-hour drives across the state for First-of-Year birds, right? (Oh, how I only wish that was a joke.)
The first long trip of the year was as a passenger, heading up to the Upper Peninsula in search of a continuing Northern Hawk-Owl. While that owl had moved on by the time time we got up there and the weather was a blistering -27 degrees Fahrenheit BEFORE factoring in the windchill, and -48 degrees windchill included, we still had a great day, tallying my Lifer Bohemian Waxwing and Pine Grosbeak, along with a few other new year birds that brought my January total to 89.
A few days later on the 17th the second trip the year, also as a passenger, would bring me to Harsen’s Island in St. Clair County, which is an incredible location along the Detroit River between the US and Canada, which – in addition to being a nice car-birding destination – for whatever reason tends to hold a large number of overwintering birds that typically are gone from most of the state. After a full day of birding in which we landed a number of ducks and a lingering Gray Catbird, the day ended with a Short-eared Owl at the nearby known Duce Rd spot – bird #100 for the year! My goal now achieved, I went home satisfied and ready to call it quits on the craziness that had enraptured me over the past couple weeks. I typed up nice long post celebrating my achievement and posted it to the Michigan Bird Listing Facebook page, totally unaware that a comment on that post from Michigan birding legend Brendan Klick would ignite chain-reaction of events that would change my life forever. See, Brendan had a crazy idea – with two weeks remaining in the month, why stop at 100? There were still a number of “easy” birds to add, plus who knows what else could show up! What was possible? 110? 120?
And so began the end of my Oakland County Big Year, as on my next day off instead of “staying local” as I had planned, I found myself taking my first ever solo birding trip across the state in order to head to the west side of the state to pick up Eurasian Collared-Dove and my Lifer Iceland Gull in Muskegon County, and picked up a Golden Eagle in Jackson County “on the way” back. Then a few days later I headed into Washtenaw County for a Horned Grebe, then Wayne County for a Black-crowned Night Heron, and then Monroe County for a Yellow-rumped Warbler. Finally, when January came to a close, I was sitting at 121 species.
What I haven’t mentioned at this point, though, is that as my species total grow I began paying more-and-more attention to the eBird Top 100 list for Michigan. See, Monroe County birder Justin Labadie had rocketed up 100 in the first few days of the year before slowing down as he returned to work, and fellow Michigan Bird Listing regular Brandon Aho and I had both passed him around the same time. For a few days Brandon and I traded the top spot back and forth, but by late January I pulled slightly ahead, finally securing the top spot in the entire state year-to-date. With January in the books, now it surely had to be time for this craziness to end, right? As I said earlier I simply didn’t have the resources or flexibility to keep this up, and sooner or later I would need to stop this madness. But, as the sun set on January, a crazy idea began to find it’s way into my head: I wonder… what if… maybe, just maybe, I did this all again next month? What if my “100 Species for the month of January” turned into a challenge; what if I tried to see 100 species every month of 2022?
First and foremost - thank you to anyone who chooses to support me in this insane adventure of mine. When I initially had this idea and began planning I didn't even consider the possibility that others would want to support me, but I am extremely grateful to those who have reached out to do so. For those who are interested in supporting me, I have set up a Patreon, which can be accessed by clicking the logo to the left (or you can send me a message via the contact page). Again, thank you for your incredibly generous support!
All Patrons will receive my "Daily Notes" 12-36 hours after the end of each day, and Patrons subscribed to the "Sponsor" tier will receive monthly postcards, mailed out between the 25th and end of each month.
Follow me on my journey to see 100 species in every Lower-48 State during 2025, experience some of the incredible places and events in American birding, and meet and bird with as many local birders as possible along the way.
Posts will be made every Wednesday at 5pm EST and will cover the previous Monday through Sunday. Additional posts will be made periodically with no set schedule.
