Season 4, Episode 3: Tobin Brown’s Nebraska Big Year, and a Whooping Craine update

A hardy welcome to summer birding and the return, after a break for migration, of The Big Year Podcast.  Seems silly of me to tell you the title of the show, since you must have known it when you clicked on the podcast to begin with.

Today, we have two guests.  Our first guest is Tobin Brown, who did a Nebraska Big Year, and broke the previous record for birds seen in the state for a single year.  And our second guest, Brooke Showan will tell her story of having found, through serendipity, or just really good bird spotting skills, the Whooping Crane many of us drove to northern Ontario to see, just as I was finishing up the previous episode with Roberta Bondar, where we discussed her involvement with the Conservation efforts of the Whooping Cranes in North America.

As reported in my May 1 episode, I drove north to Bruce Mines to see the wayward bird, but did not have the chance to talk to the birder who initially found it, reported it to the International Crane Foundation, and became a bit of a local celebrity for her amazing discovery, less than an hour’s drive south of Dr. Bondar’s home in Sault Ste. Marie.  I was able to catch up with Brooke, early in May, and I think you’ll enjoy the story of her own Whooping Crane adventure.

I had a good migration season, beginning with a little cheeky movie parody of 50 Shades of Gray, called 31 Shades of Yellow, and shared some of my favourite yellowish warblers and vireos each day of May on Instagram.  But it was May 2 when we had the first highlight of migration, when a White-faced Ibis showed up in my local patch, right here in Brant County.  It was species number 245 for my county list and a bird I never expected to show up locally.  It was the second Brant County Lifer of the year, the first being a Ross’s Goose in March.

On May 7, I was fortunate enough to see a Bell’s Vireo, another very rare bird for Ontario, not far from home at Lakeside Park in Kitchener.  A couple of days later a Western Cattle Egret showed up in Norfolk County, not far from the Long Point Bird Observatory, another fine place for birding during migration season.  That same day the first of many Summer Tanagers reported in May, landed on Woodstock Avenue just around the corner from Long Point.

At Point Pelee one of the most coveted warblers of spring migration, a Worm Eating Warbler, made an appearance on the Sanctuary Trail at the north end of the park.  Worm Eating Warblers are never guaranteed during any given migration se