As I write this before settling in for the night on New Year’s Eve, I am confronted by the exciting reality that the trip I have spent the last year and a half looking forward to is finally here. Tomorrow morning when I wake before dawn and head to Timoteo Burkhardt’s house to begin our Pima County Big Day, I will officially be starting my year-long journey. Yes, I am nervous – but I am not nearly as nervous as I am excited.
I am continuing to finalize my routes for the states in the back-half of January and through February, and will be updating the Roadmap over the course of the next week as I continue to line things up. On that note – if you are a birder in Mississippi or Alabama and are interested in meeting up to go birding please don’t hesitate to reach out via emailing me at [email protected].
I began my drive from Lapeer, Michigan to Tucson, Arizona on Saturday the 28th at about 7:30am with hopes to put Michigan, Indiana and Illinois behind me by nightfall – a task made slightly more challenging by my last-minute decision to stop for one last rare bird chase in Michigan. As fate would have it a few days ago an Ash-throated Flycatcher showed up in Battle Creek, Michigan – as fate would have it almost directly along my preferred route. Unfortunately “Ashie” as the bird has come to be known decided to be MIA Saturday morning (though has since shown back up), and so I left Michigan with 359 species on my state list – unfortunately tied with my friend John Porath, whom for the past few years I have repeatedly vowed I would one day pass. While I never did manage to follow through on this bit of friendly competition, I take solace in the fact that I caught up to his decades-long head start in just a handful of years.
While the stop didn’t yield one last Michigan bird before I hit the road, it did give me one last opportunity to spend some time hanging out with my friend Isaac, who along with my family and a few other friends (including the aforementioned John) is one of the people I will miss the most as I depart Michigan.
Despite the delay caused by the unsuccessful chase of Ashie, I did manage to follow through on my goal of making it through to Missouri, and I settled in for the night a bit south of St Louis in the town of Farmington, MO. In the morning I started up with my plans for the next few days: spend some time birding my way southwest in the morning and then get the bulk of my driving in later in the day. My first birds of the day were a Belted Kingfisher and Great Blue Heron at the Farmington Sewage Lagoon – a pair that I thought to be quite the interesting duo to find at a sewage pond. From there I birded my way west through the Ozarks, and I have to say I was stunned by how gorgeous Missouri is. I had never considered MO to be a mountainous state, but I guess that just goes to show how much I still have to learn about each state in the US – a huge focus of the coming year.
As I continued to bird my way west I picked up a plethora of birds that would be attainable in Michigan such as Carolina Wren, Dark-eyed Junco, White-breasted Nuthatch and the typical smattering of Woodpeckers; the only bird different from a typical list in Michigan was Carolina Chickadee in place of Black-capped, a distinction I only knew to make due to geography as visually the two are for all intents and purposes identical. Eventually I found myself at the Dillard Mill State Historic Site, where after a short time birding I encountered Cindy, a Missouri Parks employee who offered to give me a tour of the site’s famous historic mill. I accepted and am glad I did, as the interior of the Mill was fascinating. The myriad pieces of machinery, all powered a massive system of gears and pulleys which can be traced back to the water-powered turbine, completely blew my mind – and it was a system I found far more interesting than modern equipment.
After that I began working my way towards Oklahoma, where I planned to spend the morning of the 30th before continuing on to new Mexico, but unfortunately I was soon hit by a bout of bad fortune.
“Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.” I figured I would have my fair share of Murphy’s Law moments throughout the coming year, but I didn’t expect my first ones to come before the year even began. Unfortunately two reared their heads over the course of the 29th. The first came when I began to have issues with my camera batteries – they weren’t holding a charge that would last more than twenty-to-thirty minutes of use. Fortunately this issue was relatively easily remedied, unlike it’s counterpart.
Apparently my phone decided to follow suit in the path set forth by my camera, and as the day went on I began to have battery issues with it too. Well, that’s not exactly fair to say as I have wanted to get my battery replaced in my phone for a while as it doesn’t last as long as I feel it should, but it was a very manageable problem so long as I made sure to carry a portable charging pack or plug my phone in when driving – except that now my charging port decided to start acting up. I tried calling around to see if I could find a place that could fix/replace the port for me, but unfortunately by this point in the day most places were either closed or so far away they’d be closed by the time I could get there, and with my battery rapidly dying I was forced to make a decision.
Eventually, thanks in part to the input of my brother Tyler, I settled upon skipping my plans for birding on the 30th and head straight to Albuquerque, where I could deal with the issue and then spend some time hanging out with Tyler and my other ABQ-resident brother Ben. This seemed like the best case scenario, and I began the long drive towards The Land of Enchantment. I eventually settled for the night in Oklahoma after driving through Missouri and Kansas for a while, sleeping in the far-west OK town of Woodward.
I woke early in the morning and made the rest of the drive to Albuquerque, arriving in the early afternoon and heading straight to a phone repair place, where I was met with some very unfortunate news. Apparently, the way Google Pixel 7a’s are built (and possibly many other phones too, I am not sure so don’t take this as slander of the phone I otherwise love), it is pretty much unfeasible to replace the charging port as doing so required replacing the motherboard and the screen often breaks in the process, meaning doing so is more expensive than just getting a new phone. The technician suggested that he could try just cleaning out the port, but said that might not solve the problem entirely. He cleaned the port and afterwards the phone seemed to be able to charge perfectly fine, and so I hoped my issues were now behind me.
That night I plugged my phone in and headed to bed – but unfortunately when I woke up the morning of New Year’s Eve I found my phone was not only not fully charged, but now seemed to be totally unable to charge. I tried a different cord but was met with the same result, and begrudgingly had to accept that my best recourse was now to buy an entire new phone. Ugh, what a way to start the year, right? I guess the silver lining is I have an upgrade for next year – one with a brand new battery and a fully functional charging port. After dealing with the phone issue I began the drive through the desert to Arizona – a drive with scenery that was incredibly breathtaking – a barren, bleak landscape that is as gorgeous as it is unforgiving.
As the year kicks off today, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who has supported me so far – whether it just be by reading this blog, sharing it with others, reaching out to me with suggestions of places to visit or to arrange to bird together, or by subscribing to my Patreon (patreon.com/PeoplePlacesBirds). Speaking of Patreon – starting tomorrow 1/2 I will be posting daily notes from my birding the day before – very informal and not narrative, but far more detailed than the posts I will be making here. Also, for anyone who pledges to the Sponsor tier, I will be sending out monthly postcards from one of the places I birded that month!
I am looking forward to my post for next week, which will cover birding Wednesday the 1st through Sunday the 5th, encompassing my time in Arizona birding with Timoteo Burkhardt, Ken Blankenship, and Gordon Karre.
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.
