At the beginning of 2021, my brother Ron and I decided to embark on what we are referring to as an “Average Year”. This is essentially a scaled down version of what birders commonly refer to as a “Big Year” where the objective is to find as many unique bird species in a calendar year. The “Big” adjective is a bit daunting as neither of us have the extra funds or spare time to chase birds anywhere close to the 650+ low water mark of the upper echelons in the birding community – not to mention my own life list had just crested the 300 mark right before we kicked off this adventure (link here). Through the course of the year, Ron and I took detailed stats as we steadily checked bird after bird off. That data allowed us to track our comparative progress so we could relish in each other’s successes. Who am I kidding, we’re brothers, it was all about the competition ha. That first year came to close bringing quite a shock to both of us. In spite of several setbacks over the year and in thanks to a late surge we both came surprisingly close to 300. At the start I remember telling Ron I thought 250 would be the high water mark for an even overly optimistic prediction. Final numbers came in at 296 for Ron and an oh so close 298 for me. Initially, I was thinking this was a one and done endeavor and then go back to more casual birding. That was before the adrenaline rush of those final days to get to 300. So close and there were so many missed birds over the course of the year. After careful deliberation, soul searching, spiritual consultations and calls to online psychics … we’ve decided to continue the quest. The second year closed with a much more favorable outcome – we both made it over the 300 threshold. And so we have continued. 2023 was a record year for both of us as I hit 340 and Ron made good on his promise to break 300. 2024 was a bit of a down year having switched up our trip to Texas in the winter for a run through Arizona which ended up costing dearly. Still not a shabby 325 – we shall no talk about Ron’s productivity. It is now 2025 and we are both back at it. I have big hopes this year we can break our record!.
We do have some rules for our friendly competition. First off all, almost all the rules from our previously established “Field Guide for Competitive Birder Rules of Engagement” (link here) still hold. For Ron’s sake, we did suspend rule 6 requiring a featured blog post to get the bird added to the count. We have relaxed the rules a bit in respect for our growing bird ID confidence and reality of hard it is to get a picture of primarily nocturnal birds. In general rule 4 (a photograph of the bird sufficient to confirm the ID is still required) is still in play as you can never go wrong with documented proof, however, for birds we are both very familiar with it is no longer needed – for example, we know what a Northern Cardinal looks/sounds. Hear/see one of those in the field, take the check. Also Merlin can be used as validation for difficult birds like the nocturnal ones. Hear an Eastern Whip-Poor-Will calling out in the night, get multiple verified sound clips from Merlin and you are also good to go. The web gallery is no longer required (rule 20). Note, if we are both at the same place, see the same bird, but only one of us accomplishes a photograph, then the other person can use that other individual’s shot for the count. This gets rid of the caveats of one getting penalized for being at a bad angle or missed the shot due to pointing out the location to the other person etc. etc.. Unlike politics, we still strive to be civilized.
All of our yearly stats, graphs and birding videos can be found in the links below as well as our progress in this year’s quest. Thanks to Ron’s Sliver program (link here), we are now able to provide a Google Earth based video of the places we bird throughout the year – super cool! I’ll update this periodically when he is able to generate a new video for us.
Average Year 2025 Quick Look – comparisons to previous years can be seen at the bottom of this page:
Average Year 2025 Stats and Details – link here
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Average Year 2024 Quick Look:
Average Year 2024 Stats and Details – link here
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Average Year 2023 Quick Look:
Average Year 2023 Stats and Details – link here
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Average Year 2022 Quick Look:
Average Year 2022 Stats and Details – link here
Yearly Comparisons – 2023-2025
Count Comparison
Species Comparison
Life Intrigued 