Big Day with live updates, Saturday 3/16

For anyone who is interested in following,  I will be attempting to post live updates to the blog this Saturday, 3/16, for a big day of birding.  Matt, Eamon, and I are going to be trying for over 120 species within 24 hours along the MS and AL coasts.  I am sure you guys all have something better to do than watch all day, but check in if you have a minute and would like to see where we are and what we are seeing.  I will be adding a tentative route map to this post later this week.

Horned Grebe

Eamon has been diligently checking eBird and making this map for the big day:

View Larger Map

We plan to start at 3AM at Point aux Pines, AL to look for owls and rails and make our way to Dauphin Island, AL before sunrise to start looking for migrant warblers and thrushes.  On the west side of the island we are going to be looking for gulls, terns, sandpipers, and plovers before we hit the road on head west.  Moving west, we will be looking for swallows, sparrows, ducks, and wading birds at various stops along the way.  Our route could change depending on what we see early in the day, and what species we still need to find.  We are really hoping to find some good migrants to help boost our numbers, and hopefully, we can find all of the species we've been seeing all winter!