The Big Sit! 2010

The Big Sit! 2010 is coming up.  You should participate.

 

If you're wondering what The Big Sit! is, here it is in a nutshell, straight from The Big Sit! website:

"The Big Sit! is an annual, international, noncompetitive birding event hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest and founded by the New Haven (CT) Bird Club. Every team that observes this year's "Golden Bird" has a chance to win $500. We hope bird watchers from around the globe will unite on this special day by participating in this event (it's free!). The Big Sit! is sponsored by Swarovski Optik.

The Big Sit! is like a Big Day, or a bird-a-thon in that the object is to tally as many bird species as can be seen or heard within 24 hours. The difference lies in the area limitation from which you can observe. THIS FREE EVENT is OPEN to every person and club in any country!

Some people have called it a "tailgate party for birders." Today there are Big Sit! circles all over the world, including Guatemala, India, the Netherlands, England, Vietnam, and New Zealand.

The simplicity of the concept makes The Big Sit! so appealing. Find a good spot for bird watching -- preferably one with good views of a variety of habitats and lots of birds. Next you create a real or imaginary circle 17 feet in diameter and sit inside the circle for 24 hours, counting all the bird species you see or hear. That's it. Find a spot, sit in it, have fun."

Click here to find out more and register your circle.

I participated for the first time last year.  I had big plans to place my circle on the minimum maintenance road that's about a mile south of my house, hoping to find some awesome stuff.  However, the weather turned nasty (snow, cold, etc.) and I ended up having it in my yard.  It was still a lot of fun, even though it never got above 30° F and there were a few inches of snow on the ground.  I ended with 30 species, including my one-and-only Fox Sparrow of that fall, a flyover Prairie Falcon, and several Greater Prairie-Chickens. 

I didn't take any photos during The Sit, but here's a representative photo I took the day before of a Field Sparrow posing with a clump of snow in a still-green Siberian Elm.