The new state record!
On Saturday, four completely insane Oregonians piled into a car and spent 24 straight hours in search of ornithological glory. They found it.
Tim Janzen, Dave Irons, Noah Strycker and John Sullivan, pictured above, birded continuously from midnight to midnight, traveling from Eugene to the Coast to Summer Lake, east of the Cascades, to rack up the single biggest Big Day of birding in Oregon history.
They identified 219 species, breaking the previous Oregon Big Day record of 216, set in 2002 by a team that included Janzen on a route from Portland to Summer Lake. This week’s team started with a Western Screech Owl at midnight in Eugene; 23 hours and 32 minutes later they identified Yellow Rails, their last species, at Klamath Forest National Wildlife Refuge.
The current Big Day is also a North American Big Day record for June, the previous total being only 202.