NH Birders Hold 24 Hour Contest

The Audubon Team of David Houghton, Francie Von Mertens, and Patience Chamberlain decided they would get some sleep before they went birding.

The competition began at midnight, but the this team begain their big day at 4am at Clough State Park in Weare.

That's apparently a good time to find barred owls.

But rather than look for the birds in the dark forest, the team convinced the birds to look for them.

They played a recording of owl calls.

SOUND UP: owl calls

And after a while, real owls began to respond.

Von Mertens and Chamberlain were delighted.
hoo hoo hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo hoo (faintly) whoo! that's great. that's just great.

After that first identification, many more species followed.

But David Houghton, the new president of NH Audubon, points out the obvious.

Its not easy to find birds in a forest.
the tough part about this is, alot of the species we're going to pick up today we're going to pick up by ear rather than see them. some people like my daughter have real good auditory memory. and some people like me have really bad auditory memory. its ok on a few, but when we get into the warblers and they start buzzing, its like what's that? its like going into the cobwebs of your mind.

Francie Von Mertens, who writes a birding column for the Monandnock Ledger in Peterborough.

She uses alot of tricks to remember bird calls, like this one for the yellow warbler.
SOUND UP...chirp can you hear it sweet sweet i'm so very sweet.....and the catbird is the squaky one over there...

Of course, some birds don't need to be heard to be identified.

That's especially true if it is a bald eagle.
walking....tweet... that's big that's very big..where is that from. they're not supposed to be here...that's great.

The team used up many of their precious minutes admiring that eagle perched over the Piscataquog River.

But then, they were off again.

From Clough State Park, the team headed to Manchester, Pawtuckaway state park in Nottingham, and the Exeter Waste Water Treatment plant.

And at each location, they tried to find as many species as possible.

Birdathon rules require that all members confirm that they had seen or heard the same thing.

David Houghton kept the checklist and called out the species to the other team members in the car.

yellow warbler, chesnut sided warbler.......(list)....26

Not all the teams were driving around to try and find their birds.

At least one team decided to stay near home and count them.

They called themselves the Kucinich Team, after the Ohio Democrat running for President.

Their motto was, "we won't win, but we're sticking to our principles".

The Audubon team headed by David Houghton was a little more competitive than the Kucinich team.

But they weren't giving 110 percent, either.

Houghton and Francie Von Mertens summed up Team Audubon's philosophy.
there's two sides to this. there's the fun side and there's the competitive side of it. so, we're going to see more birds than anyone else, right? francie. we're going to have at least more fun than anybody else. dd is that the idea, is it a competition? dh-well, its part of it, yeah. francie its a big day. dh yeah, its a big day.

The team wrapped up its big day on the seacoast.

To find shore birds, the well equipped birder brings along binoculars and an even stronger optical scope mounted on a tripod.

This setup makes the job of identifying shorebirds a little easier.

And in Rye, they reached an important milestone.

It came as Francie Von Mertens scanned the coastline with David Houghton.
fvm its in a little corner. he's almost out of view. there's a little dip there. i see a ring. dh one zero zero. fvm one hundred woo hoo. slap slap slap. high fives. yeh......

In 14 hours, the team identified one hundred and fourteen different species.

They landed in fifth place of nine teams.

A team that searched for the full 24 hours found 150 species and won the "Birdathon", and the respect of other teams.

The Kucinich team stayed close to home and, as expected, did not win.

But they found 92 species, and didn't burn a drop of fossil fuel.