Now for the main scope of this blog, time to introduce the National Park birding challenge I created for myself.
When I started this challenge I had been loving birding for 3 years (i.e. counting and dedicating outings and trips to the birds) but observing birds for all my life. By the summer of 2022 I had seen a lot of the regional birds in my area and was looking for some inspiration on where to expand my search. The options for birdings hotspots are infinite but I didn't want to start tackling them arbitrarily. By chance, I was inspired to create a National Parks birding challenge by another birding challenge; birding the state birds in their respective states.
The catalyst was a local Los Alamos nature center talk given by someone who had completed their decade-plus goal of spotting each of the state birds within their respective states. Ahead of the talk my husband and I both anticipated that it would become my new obsession but it didn’t quite resonate with me. I like that it's a clear goal and checklist (I love checklists) and I like that it takes you all over the US, but it wasn't for me. I realized I had two unmet prerequisites for my birding goal:
I felt strongly that my checklist should include a wide variety of birds - the first thing we learned at the presentation was that most states share birds with other states so by my count there are only 22 different birds on the list and two of those are domestic chickens. I want to see and learn about as many different birds as I can.
I wanted the goal to take me to see some of the most beautiful and geologically and ecologically diverse parts of the US - one of my favorite things about birding is the places it brings me to, most of the state birds can be seen near a major airport
The presenter’s favorite trips happened to remind me of some of my favorite trips. For example, the Western Meadowlark brought him to the grasslands of 6 different states. Our presenter succeeded in seeing them in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota in one day with a short drive across two borders but I can surmise that all he saw was farmland. Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota are homes to Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone NP, Glacier NP, and Theodore Roosevelt NP! My visits to Yellowstone and Grand Teton have been some of the best days of my life. I couldn’t wrap my head around how a goal to visit those states would not bring me to those geographic treasures.
It got me thinking though on how to improve on this challenge and before we even hit the parking lot I was wondering if there is any sort of bird representative or ambassador bird for each of the 63 National Parks. In some cases, unofficially, yes, like Big Bend and the Colomia Warbler, but in general, no. So I set about defining my own list and birding challenge. Here are the rules:
The bird must be a year-round resident of the park
I want this challenge to be as unrestrictive as possible because the parks are beautiful at all times of year and an ambassador bird should really be there welcoming visitors all year. Also, as I’ve said before there are lots of amazing birding hotspots and I didn’t want this challenge to compete with once-in-a-lifetime Spring and Fall migration hotspot trips.
The bird should be representative of the National Park in some way
The bird should remind us of the park or be part of what makes the park so spectacular (though this is subjective, what makes the park special to me might be different than what makes it special to you, I think it’s an important criteria), for example black-throated sparrows are known to hang around the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns and welcome people with a song, they’re part of the daily routine there.
The bird should be regional (occuring in only a handful of National Parks)
This is semi-redundant with rule #2, in escessence this helps ensure the variety I’m looking for (a reason to travel east, west, north, or south to find the bird) and it’s important to being a true park ambassador.
Stay tuned for my complete national park birding challenge list!
Note: If you’re also thinking that the list of state birds is a bit disappointing you should check out a great article from the LIVINGBIRD Spring 2023 Vol. “What if the State Birds Were Determined by Data” where they propose state birds based on the bird with the most significant global population living in that state during breeding season. For example, Kentucky would be the Yellow-throated warbler because 10.3% of the global population breeds in the state which is highest of any state and that proportion is highest of any bird in Kentucky.
A sneak peek at one of the bird ambassadors, the Black-throated Sparrow
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