Superbowl of Birding VII (The Road North)

Two Saturdays ago, 1/30/2010, I participated in the Superbowl of Birding VII with a team from the New York State Young Birders Club (the NYSYBC Ninja Nighthawks) consisting of myself, Hope Batcheller, Benjamin van Doren, and Greg Lawrence. The Superbowl of Birding is a twelve-hour-long birding competition in Essex County, Massachusetts and Rockingham County, New Hampshire. The goal of the competition is to get as many points as possible, since each species has a certain point value (1-5) depending on it rarity.

The story of this superbowl actually starts the day before for me, a day where I had to sit in school while Hope and Greg scouted the area for potentially good stops on tomorrow's route. As soon as last period ended, I was in the main hall of the Pinkham Building waiting for Ben, who was catching a ride up to MA with us. Even better, Hope had extended an invitation for the whole team to stay at her grandmother's house in Brookline, NH. The upside of this was free lodging and meals, but the downside was that the house was an hour from where we wanted to start the day. We took the offer. Ben and his mom showed up in the main hall right around three, and we transferred his scope and bags from his car to ours then hit the road for NH. We passed through Hartford at the right time to see thousands of crows flying in to roost and grabbed some snacks at the Charleston rest area. After a little over three hours, we made it to Hope's grandmother's house.

At Hope's grandmother's house, we took all our bags directly from the car down to the guest house where the three of us would be sleeping that night along with Greg Lawrence, a junior from Rochester, NY. We then walked back up to the house where Hope, Greg, and the adults were. I hadn't seen Hope since attending High Pond Audubon camp in Vermont, and I had never met Greg before, so introductions were made all around. The adults then started working on dinner (pasta) while us four young birders gathered around maps and scouting notes to plan the next day's route.

Dinner was great, with talk revolving around school and birds, then we finished planning the route, played the description game with Greg's Sibley, and then headed off to bed at around 11 at night. Wake up time was three am the next morning.