Legacy Magazine

By Phil Broder

Photo by Joan Kocur.

You know your competition has reached critical mass when it’s big enough to be mocked by Steve Carell on an episode of “The Daily Show.” Because, like the National Spelling Bee, it’s only a few short steps from a head-to-head geek smackdown to being the subject of an award-winning documentary to going live on ESPN. If Jon Stewart and Comedy Central love you, you’re on your way.

That’s the case with the World Series of Birding. It’s the Super Bowl of “pssshing,” the World Cup of binocular-toting nerds, the Olympics of clapper rail calling. And if the mere concept of competitive birdwatching has you doubled over with laughter, then you need to pick up your Nikons and head to Cape May, New Jersey, for this rite of spring.

Organized by the New Jersey Audubon Society, the WSB enters its 27th year in 2010. At its core, the concept is simple: During a designated 24-hour, midnight-to-midnight period in May, teams of birders scour New Jersey in an effort to see and hear the most species of birds. Teams compete in several categories (adult, youth, corporate sponsored, etc.) and various geographic regions (whole state, Cape May County only, Cape Island only, etc.). A system of checks and balances keeps teams from cheating. Teams rush to the finish line at the West Cape May firehouse to turn in their final tallies before midnight, and it usually takes between 220 and 250 species for a team to raise the coveted Urner Stone Cup.

And it would all be just that easy, if this weren’t an event based in serious enviro-geek bird-nerd culture. First, you have to pick a killer name for your team—like the Lagerhead Shrikes, the Marshketeers, Mighty Mighy Turnstones, the Limping Limpkins, Wacky Willets, Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Brant!, and Nine Inch Rails. Printing up team shirts doesn’t hurt, and tastefully decorating your team vehicle isn’t frowned upon either.

Second, the top teams are sponsored. Nikon, Swarovski, Zeiss, and Steiner Optics all have teams, as do WildBird Magazine and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. My own team of fourth graders was happy with the 49 species they logged, but they weren’t even close to the 117 birds tallied by a team of “professional” fourth graders sponsored by Steiner Optics. After the competition, you’ll find ads in birding magazines touting the binoculars and spotting scopes used by the winners. Bragging rights are on the line.

Third, while this is only a one-day event, it really isn’t. Top teams send scouts a week in advance to poke through forests and marshes, mapping out where birds will be. Using rare bird hotlines and computer forums, teams spend days figuring out where to spend valuable minutes. Every team is going to see the common birds; winners are those who find red-footed falcons that have blown in from Siberia. Road maps are covered in red ink, laying out the shortest route between short-eared owls and northern gannets. And somebody has to stock up on everything from snacks to toilet paper. Planning is everything.

Fourth, practice your bird calls. Winners usually identify about two-thirds of their birds by song, not sight. The competition begins at midnight, so expect to spend the first six hours before daylight listening for owls, rails, and anything else that goes chirp in the night. Mark Garland of the Cape May Bird Observatory has built his career around being able to hear birds that nobody else can.

Finally, just for kicks, you can use your birding to make a statement. Some teams now compete only on foot, running from birding hotspot to hotspot, reducing their carbon footprint (and there’s a special trophy for these crazed, scope-toting marathoners). Others specialize in water birds, limiting their competition to what they can see from boats. Still others practice digiscoping, taking digital photos of every bird they see. One team of senior citizens counts only the birds that fly by the park bench on which they sit all day. It never hurts to have a gimmick.

To say that the competition is cutthroat doesn’t convey the bloodlust that competitive birding engenders. It’s not unheard of for teams to practice dirty tricks like parking in the middle of a road leading to a popular birding area, blocking everyone else’s access. Giving out misinformation is fairly common, although recent advances in iPhones now allow every team to get up-to-the-minute bird sightings sent directly to them. GPS has put an end to teams doling out phony directions.

So, what’s the result of all these avifauna obsessives spending a spring day chasing warblers? The event’s founder, Pete Dunne, realized the moneymaking potential of the World Series. Teams raise pledges (25 cents per bird sounds like a bargain, if you aren’t aware that last year’s winners had 229 species), which can go toward the conservation group of their choice, or to New Jersey Audubon. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised this way. There’s also a great deal of scientific data being collected, as the World Series amounts to a Christmas Bird Count during the May nesting season. And 18 youth teams competed last year, which presents a great opportunity for education. The winners, a Nikon-backed high school squad, had 211 species (and probably get beaten up by the football team on a regular basis).

In Cape May County, considered to be one of the world’s best birding spots, ecotourism (mostly birdwatching) brings in upwards of $32 million annually. If any other TV shows want to make fun of the World Series of Birding, the chamber of commerce would welcome them to town. Competitive birding may be the ne plus ultra of geek chic, but as long as money talks, this sort of nerdiness is just fine.

Phil Broder is the director of education with the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. For more info about the WSB, visit www.birdcapemay.org. To find the July 18, 2000, “Daily Show” video about the World Series, just Google “World Series of Birding.” Or buy a copy of the film “Opposable Chums: Guts and Glory at the World Series of Birding” at www.opposablechums.com.