Numbers were up this year for both the winged and nonwinged at the second annual Big Sit birding event Oct. 17 at Coldwater Spring in the Mississippi National River & Recreation Area in Minneapolis.
More than 100 birders participated, compared to last year's 60. They chatted over beers and kept watch on the oak savanna, where flocks of cedar waxwings whirled by and eastern bluebirds fed on grasshoppers.
"Birding can be fun," said park ranger Sharon Stiteler, aka "Birdchick," local birding enthusiast, author, blogger and podcaster. "And it can be a party."
A core group of birders stayed most of the day, ducking out occasionally for food or beer runs.
The official goal of the Big Sit, a nationwide event, is to tally the different species spotted or heard from within a 17-foot diameter circle over a 24-hour period and submit results to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird database.
Many in attendance frequent the "Birds and Beers" events that Stiteler started in 2007, which members say have become almost too popular. (She hopes someone will start one in St. Paul to spread out the crowd.) They chat regularly on social networking. They fly to bird festivals together.
More concerned with fun than strict adherence to rules, Stiteler planned the Big Sit from dawn to dusk and encouraged groups of birders to trek outside the circle and down to the Mississippi River, where they scared up such birds as the hermit thrush, orange-crowned warbler and ruby-crowned kinglet. She brought devices for attaching phones to telescopes for digiscoping, and children checked out mallard and turkey vulture skulls.
Total bird count: 49 (compared to last year's 37)
