My 2025 World Series of Birding Report

Cape May Meadows viewing platform at dawn

If you’re coming in late, yesterday, May 10, 2025, I participated in New Jersey Audubon’s World Series of Birding. I was on the Cape May Bird Observatory team of 28 people. The object of this fundraiser is to tally as many species as possible in one day. Participants make donations to New Jersey Audubon based on the number of species a team sees, and also can gather donations from friends, family, and businesses. Some Level 1 teams cover the whole state of New Jersey from midnight to midnight. We’re a Level 2 team with a more relaxed schedule, going from about 5 AM to about 9 PM. The traditional plan was for the team to travel by bus (originally in their own cars) to various locations around Cape May County, and that’s what 20 of us did. Since covid, new rules allow others to be on the team while birding on their own from wherever they live. This adds a lot to our list, especially as some team members were birding in New York State, and New Mexico, but for me, the bus group total is the important one. Of course, more species means more donations to a good cause, so I’m fine with that.

Cape May Point, early morning, looking for a female Painted Bunting at a feeder

One factor that makes a big difference in how the team does is the weather, and this year it was sunny all day with temperatures from the 50s to the low 70s. That sounds ideal unless you know that there was a 20mph northwest wind most of the day that often made it difficult to hear birds (heard calls count), kept birds from being active in the trees and sky at times, and made it a VERY cold start to the day. Well, there’s always something! But the wind definitely affected our team bus total. After a freezing start at the Cape May Meadows, we found some good birds at the Cape May Bird Observatory’s Northwood center in Cape May Point, including Summer Tanager and Red-Headed Woodpecker. The former is rare at that location, and the latter is rare all over New Jersey, I hadn’t seen one in a few years. Then we walked along Lily Lake and down a residential street in town to where someone’s backyard feeder has been hosting a female Painted Bunting, an even more rare bird in New Jersey. They usually don’t come this far north, but young birds of many species do tend to wander, perhaps one way they expand territory. After a short wait, we had good looks. A little later by the lake, we saw two more rare birds at the same time, soaring overhead: a Swallow-Tailed Kite and two Mississippi Kites. Again, birds I haven’t seen in years, though a few are tallied every year in New Jersey. We were off to a great start, my own list was at 60 species when we headed north into the rest of the county at around 9 AM.

At the bridge on Sunset Road, Belleplain State Forest

From there things did not go so well with for us. We did woodland birding in several places, but missed species we knew were there, but weren’t calling or in sight. At Cox Hall Creek we added a few more, and at Belleplain State Forest, where I do a lot of birding on my own. A good half dozen species I knew were there could not be found. Team members in other places were adding to our total, but our bus group seemed to be well behind the usual count as I remember it. In the past we would often reach 100 species before lunch, this year that didn’t happen until mid afternoon, and as the count goes up it becomes ever harder to find new ones to add.

Two Dunlin and a Dowitcher at the Wetlands Institute, Stone Harbor

After a late lunch, we began pursuing wetland and coastal birds, first at Jake’s Landing, on Delaware Bay, then at Avalon and Stone Harbor on the Atlantic Ocean side of the county. I can rarely get good bird photos with my phone, but this one turned out okay. I was compiling my own list on eBird on my phone, but there are some problems with that. First, you have to finish and file a checklist for each location the way I was doing it, and you then can’t go back easily to check things over. In some cases I listed things twice, in others I forgot to list them. It wasn’t until this morning when I could put my results on a printed checklist that I could finally find out what my own list total was.

Sunset at Coral Avenue, Cape May Point

After our last few stops resulted in only one or two new species, the bus team began to lose the will to carry on, and just after sunset, as seen above, we called it quits around 8:30 PM, earlier than usual.

The entire team total was 206 species.

The bus team Toal was 120 species. (The previous year it was 140, I think closer to average).

My own list came to 109 species. Not bad, but today, also sunny and beautiful but with no wind, I could probably do better even by myself. Ah well, that’s the way it goes sometimes. Maybe until next year will be better…!

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