Isaac Hosey

My Birdathon Story

May 2023

By: Isaac Hosey

Thank you so much for sponsoring my first Birdathon fundraiser to benefit the work of Seattle Audubon! 

I like watching birds. For one thing, there are so many different types of birds. A pair of Steller’s Jays comes to my back patio every morning for a handful of almonds. Anna’s Hummingbirds visit us all year long, tiny and acrobatic in the air. I like owls and wish I could see more of them.

I like bald eagles—they’re big, soar through the air all majestic-like, have a cool color pattern, and bounced back from the brink of extinction. I enjoy keeping a life list of all the birds I've ever seen, and sometimes log my day lists on a citizen science app called eBird.

I decided to do Birdathon this year to raise money to protect bird habitat.  For my Birdathon I went out on a single "Big Day" to count how many different bird species I could see and hear in a 24-hour period. 

I started on Thursday, May 18. My Mom and I left our house in Seattle very early and headed south. Our first stop was the Nisqually refuge, but when we exited the highway we got lost on the way there and had to look around for where it was.  We saw a flock of Canada geese and some Starlings when we got lost, so that started my Birdathon at 7:30am. 

Once we got to Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, there were many barn swallows at the pond and a Wilson’s warbler among them. They were picking off mosquitoes and other small insects from the lake. We stopped by a lookout, where there was a bigger pond we could look out to. 

Afterwards, we went down the trail. The first part of the trail had a forest, where we saw many forest birds. We were on the boardwalk at first when there was a chipmunk on the right side of the trail. He scurried into the bushes when we came close. There were a few song sparrows nearby the boardwalk. We saw a woodpecker, but couldn’t figure out what it was until we thought about it for a bit. Our best guess was a pileated woodpecker, but afterwards, we saw a bird that we knew was a pileated. 

Then a couple of wood ducks flew right over our heads, quacking a lot. We heard downy and hairy woodpeckers, but couldn’t see them. A black-headed grosbeak was making a lot of noise over to the left of the trail, and two other birders were trying to find it. 

After that, a deer revealed itself and stood still in a murky pond. However, deers are not birds, unless they are killdeers.

The second part of the trail was a grassland with a marshy habitat. There were a lot of brown-headed cowbirds and a bird flying overhead that was hard to identify. Canada geese were with their goslings in the marshy fields, we had to walk slowly to not provoke them. We saw a few more birds before we got to the boardwalk.

The boardwalk was over low tide mudflats. There were five species of swallows there, along with a pair of Whimbrels that another birder notified us of. There was a bald eagle being guarded by a crow to make sure he didn’t do anything suspicious. A large flock of ring-billed gulls had one Caspian tern among them. 

After we got about halfway through the mudflats, we turned around and headed through the grassland again. There was a common yellowthroat in a willow bush that was only singing at first, but we looked hard until we found it.

About a minute later, we saw a sora running through the wetlands below us. It had a cocked tail. There was another birder who said he had been looking for a sora for two weeks, and he was way more excited than we were.

After the trail, we packed up and headed to Tacoma. We picked up my grandparents at their house and we all went to Titlow Beach, on the hunt for a purple martin, since we knew they had nest-boxes down at the beach. Sure enough, there was a whole flock of them just like last time, along with a few pigeon guillemots. We were hoping to see a ruddy duck down by the pond, but we did not.

It was mid-day and time to go back to Seattle. On the way there, we saw some rock pigeons and two red-tailed hawks from I-5. Then we picked up the camper and assorted family members, and headed east of the cascades to the Yakima River Canyon, specifically Umtanum Creek. 

We set up camp near the river, next to some vegetation, where we were sure to hear and see birds. Lots of Bullock’s orioles started to appear near the campsite. One bird that we were surprised to see here was a steller’s jay, sitting in the tree branches. Maybe it followed us from home? 

A bird that we heard but couldn’t see for a while was the house wren; it only appeared after we played its call. There were lots of turkey vultures in the sky above us as well. We decided to take a walk at sunset, where we found a western bluebird sitting on a signpost. 

The next morning, we got up early and took another a walk across the bridge to Umtanum Creek where we saw a yellow-breasted chat, a northern flicker and even a rattlesnake sunbathing in the middle of the trail. We packed up and went home shortly after, but not before stopping to see a killdeer, a California quail, and a mourning dove at a nearby river outlook, with some butterflies at the river’s edge as well.

Overall Birdathon was a fascinating experience for me, and i’d like to do it again next year. Thank you again for supporting me, and Happy Birding!