Day 9 - The Royal Goose Egg

Zero days.  They are the days that will actually dominate 2016 for me.  I will see fewer total birds than number of days this year in all likelihood, and getting through the zero days while staying on strategy is important.  A ZERO day isn't a bad thing.  It doesn't mean I didn't look for birds that day, and it doesn't mean things are going poorly.  In my previous big year for instance more than half of January were ZERO days.  And twice during the year I had stretches of 20+ days without new year birds.  Keep that in mind and understand that not every post is going to be gushing about the new year birds I found.  I will try to keep it interesting in other ways.  I will talk about strategy a lot, and share some tidbits from my previous big year. I want this blog to be interesting even when things slow down.

So why bring this up today? Well today was my first ZERO day of the year.  The Royal goose Egg if you will. I have strategically been pursuing at least one new year bird each day, and planned on doing so until it didn't make sense.  This is no way to keep my year a float though so it's good to finally get this out of the way. 


And don't get me wrong, it's fun to have a streak, and I planned on picking up a few birds today, but when push came to shove the extent of my Saturday birding was peering out the windows at my feeders. I have no grand plans for tomorrow as of right now either, so another possible ZERO day looms unless I wake up and decide to make a morning of things.

If the rest of January goes according to plan then I actually expect to have at least 200 ZERO days this year.  I hope I didn't just lose you. That's right I expect 200 days this year where I see no new birds...  That's a lot to swallow; and that number may be higher depending on how efficient and lucky I am. But that is the way of the state big year.  There are only so many birds to see.

New birds today: 0
Year List: 72

FOLLOW ALONG:

Next Day

Previous Day