Michael Bierly, Mark Monroe, and I conducted a KY "Big Day" effort on
Sunday, May 5, 2002.  The Land Between the Lakes had been ELECTRIC with
migrants for a few days, the weather was supposed to be good, and enough
waterbirds seemed to be around to make for a respectable list.
 
The day started off great (except for the alarm sounding at 2:00 a.m.
local time).  Pre-dawn birding conditions were excellent with a calm wind,
clear skies and some patchy fog.  Our first stop in Muhlenberg County
yielded Great Horned and Barred owls, Virginia Rail and Sora.  Eastern
Screech-Owl, Whip-poor-will, Chuck-will's-widow, American Woodcock, and
Grasshopper and Henslow's sparrows all fell right into place at subsequent
stops.  As light began to show in the east, "bonus" calls of American
Bittern and Black-billed Cuckoo were heard.  We stayed on the mined land
of Peabody WMA just long enough to record Northern Harrier, Bell's Vireo,
and a few other sometimes-hard-to-get birds of open areas such as Blue
Grosbeak, Northern Bobwhite, Wild Turkey and Savannah Sparrow.
 
The drive to LBL was through much fog, which gave two of the three
participants a chance for a little snooze.  As had been witnessed on
Thursday and Friday, LBL was still hopping with migrants.  There is a
pretty heavy infestation of some sort of oak worm that is affecting mostly
trees on the ridgetops in LBL and there is a dizzying chorus of
neotropical migrant song, especially Tennessee Warblers.  LBL is good
every year, but this is an exceptionally good one (at least as of Sunday).
Thirty species of warblers were tallied on the list by 10:30 a.m.
including staked out territories of the always-hard-to-get Cerulean and
Hooded.  Our first stop produced a Sedge Wren singing in a briary power
line cut and a Wilson's Warbler, the second a singing male Golden-winged
Warbler, and the third Cape May, Bay-breasted, and Blackburnian warblers.
Other warblers fell into place relatively quickly because of the sheer
numbers of birds and we found ourselves looking more for specialties
within an hour or so.  The worst miss of the day was Blue-winged Warbler,
two of which I'd heard the previous week in the northern part of LBL we
planned to cover.  The point of the morning at which we went by their
territories was the windiest time of the day, and because we typically
don't use taped songs for diurnal passerines, we missed the species (a not
at all uncommon nester in LBL).  The Blue-winged miss and the curious
absence of Veery and Gray-cheeked thrushes with perhaps dozens of
Swainson's produced the greatest degree of anxiety of the day, and we
expended precious time in trying to search out (but missing) those species
before leaving LBL.
 
Thanks in large part to the extraordinary visual acuity of Mark Monroe
(whose bionic eyesight has to rival any human's -- present or past), we
tallied all of the normally occurring hawks, including the ONLY day bird
not to be recorded by all three of us -- a Sharp-shinned Hawk that MLB
just got a fleeting glimpse of and admirably did not feel comfortable in
counting.  Mark regularly sees dots in the sky about a mile before my
feeble eyes can pick them up, and about the time I'm first detecting the
tiny speck, he is putting the finishing touches on identifying it as an
Osprey or Black Vulture with the naked eye.

Then it was off to Kentucky and Barkley dams where we added most of the
expected regulars as well as some lingering waterbirds including the
recently reported Pacific Loon (a great dig by MLB), that is now well
along in molting into alternate plumage, and a single Bonaparte's Gull.
The "raptor stud" dug out a distant pair of soaring Bald Eagles, another
probable miss away from LBL.  A single American White Pelican remains
above Barkley Dam, and appears to have at least one broken wing (the US
Army Corps of Engineers caught and examined the bird on Monday because we
thought its wings might be caught in some fishing line, but it's
apparently a break; another with a broken wing has been on southern Lake
Barkley for a few years now).  A couple of other stops filled in a few
remaining misses for the LBL/dams portion of the day (including the two
thrushes) and a quick stop at the Kuttawa heronry got us an unexpected
Snowy Egret and a lingering Common Goldeneye (another good dig by MLB).

Then it was off to the "transient lakes" of Christian and Warren counties
to tack some more waterbirds onto the list, which numbered 152 upon our
entry onto I-24.  I wasn't sure we were going to be able to make it the
whole way to Bowling Green before dark, but persistence kept us on pace,
and we arrived at Morgan's Pond only about 15 minutes off the planned
shedule. The Morgan's Pond area gave us a big boost as we added Bank
Swallow, American Pipit, several species of lingering waterbirds including
Pied-billed Grebe, Redhead and Ruddy Duck; shorebirds were very much in
evidence as well, with 11 species tallied including a gorgeous female
Wilson's Phalarope.
 
On our way to Bowling Green, a side trip in Russellville for Eurasian
Collared-Doves (thanks for the scouting report Mark B.) missed the dove,
but took care of our worst miss of the day, a Northern Flicker! Oddly
enough, the flicker got us to 171 species, tieing the previous KY record
total.
 
Passing fencelines, wires and fields failed to produce misses like
Loggerhead Shrike and Bobolink, but we managed to get #172 at Chaney Lake
in Warren County -- a passing Common Nighthawk.  We made it to McElroy
Lake about an hour before sunset.  There we tallied the last four
additions to the day list in the fading light: Wood Duck, dowitcher sp.
(thought to be Long-billed), Black-bellied Plover, and American Wigeon.
We continued to scan until after sunset but could add no more.

The day's biggest misses ended up being ones that are usual suspects for
potential misses and could have been avoided with a little more scouting
and/or a little more luck (although we know we had our share of the
latter).  They included Hairy Woodpecker, Belted Kingfisher, Loggerhead
Shrike, Bobolink, and the aforementioned Blue-winged Warbler.  So the
day's birding ended about 18 hours and 176 species after it began; 175
species were recorded by all three of us and the species count eclipsed
KY's old total of 171 that Jackie Elmore and I attained on May 7, 1997,
running approximately the same route.

As usual, we all felt like we should have done better, and perhaps some
day we might . . . MLB says 190 is doable!  We were sorry not to share the
accomplishment of a new record total with those who have been around in
past years, but as we neared the end of the day, we were thinking of you .
. . Joe Tom, Donny, Jackie, Burt, and others.  We all recognize it does
nothing to further bird conservation, but it's certainly challenging and
fun to do every once in awhile.

bpb
brainard.palmer-ball@mail.state.ky.us