Birding non-stop from 3:00 am to midnight, four MOS/MCC members competed as a team in the 18th World Series of Birding, held in Cape May, NJ on Saturday, May 12, 2001.

The team consisted of World Series veterans Jim Green, Byron Swift and Don Simonson, and rookie Andy Rabin. We competed against more than 50 other World Series official teams, from the US, Canada, UK and Europe. The team identified 148 species of birds in Cape May County, NJ. The combined total pledges of team sponsors, mostly MCC/MOS members, totaled over $1,000 to support the vital conservation work of Pronatura Veracruz in Mexico.

We were especially excited this year to learn that ten years of hard work by Pronatura Veracruz has succeeded in the purchase of land for the Veracruz Bird Observatory, at Chichixatle, Veracruz, Mexico - the first bird observatory in Mexico!

The team begins the day at 3:00 am by getting wired - literally! Jason Kessler, an award-winning documentary film-maker, sends a camerawoman, Kate, to accompany us on the entire "Grim Grind", from start to finish. By 3:45 am, working by flashlight, we have wired the car with microphones and crammed 4 birders, 1 camerawoman, a digital video camera, 4 spotting scopes, 4 tripods, 5 backpacks, a cooler, and lots of intense anticipation into the vehicle.

In total blackness we head into the South Cape May Meadows at the southernmost tip of Cape May Point. There we score hard-to-get species including Black-crowned Night-heron, Grasshopper Sparrow and American Woodcock. By 5 am we move north to Higbee's Beach, enjoying land birds including Blue Grosbeak, White-crowned Sparrow, Swainson's Thrush, Warbling Vireo and stunning close-up views of Blackburnian Warbler. As the morning chorus slowed, we pick up speed. Pausing at Sunset Beach (aka "The Concrete Ship"), we find the elusive American Pipit and Purple Sandpiper. As the heat of the day builds, we scour Atlantic coastal marshes and beaches, scoping for Whimbrel, Brant, sandpipers, nesting American Oystercatcher, Great Cormorant and herons. We pause in Wildwood for our now-traditional 1:23 pm ice cream cone and mid-day tally: 126 species!

The afternoon doldrums hit hard: a predicted cold front fails to materialize, heat is stifling and migrants are few and far between throughout the state. Spirits and list alike are buoyed at Reed's Beach ponds with close-up views of the day's most remarkable bird: a vagrant WHITE-FACED IBIS! 2,000 miles from its normal range (Texas!), it is a life bird for most of the team members. The Holy Order of Loggerhead Shrikes is the only team in the Series to boast a professionally catered dinner, prepared by Jim Green. Thus our dinner is elegantly served on the hood of the car parked deep in the swamp of Belleplain State Forest. With one hand grasping a sandwich and the other hand grasping binoculars, we add difficult-to-find breeding birds: singing Hooded Warbler and Yellow-throated Warbler. An Eastern Phoebe cooperatively lands on the park exit sign and wags its tail farewell as we peeled out of Belleplain enroute to Jakes Landing Marsh on the Bayshore.

As total darkness falls, we identify the calls of an American Bittern and a duet of Great Horned Owls. The team is exhausted; I call a fifteen-minute break. Remarkably, no other birding teams are at the landing. We are each alone with our thoughts in the darkness when the haunting call of Whip-poor-wills rings across the vast marsh. That call evokes the most poignant memories in me: memories of family members, friends, birds and habitats that I once knew and loved, but can never see or hear or touch again in this lifetime. When I was a boy, growing up inside the city limits of Washington, DC, Whip-poor-wills still lived and called in the woods across the street from my house. My father had taught me to identify them, and call back to them, the way he learned from his father as farm boy in the Midwest. Tonight, those woods and the singing Whip-poor-will are long gone from the city. Tonight, the Whip-poor-will's call is a call to protect whatever remains of our beautiful natural world. Tonight, the Whip-poor-will's call is a call to action: now, Now, NOW, NOW!

So act we do. We drive away from the marsh, squeezing out through the rutted dirt road past an incoming caravan of other World Series birding teams. We cross the finish line at Cape May Point State Park at 11 pm. The enthusiasm of the Youth Teams there at the finish line is contagious and delirious! We find a quasi-quiet corner, tally up and sign our checklist. We have broken our previous record of pledges and have gathered pledges worth over $1,000.00 to help Pronatura Veracruz, the wonderful grass-roots Mexican conservation group.

On behalf of the team, Thanks again to all our generous supporters! ON TO WORLD SERIES 2002!

Good birding to you,

Don Simonson
Captain, Pronatura Veracruz / Holy Order of Loggerhead Shrikes Team
World Series of Birding 2001