There was a storm coming. It wasn’t necessarily a big storm but all I kept hearing about for weeks on end was the storm brewing in the Atlantic. Would it intensify? Would it bring along rare birds with it?
And then there was the dilemma of where to sit when the storm hits. Would birds best be seen on the Delaware River or on the Susquehanna River? And if the latter, where on the Susquehanna?
Big storms, or even small storms, bring unexpected birds to unexpected areas. These “rarities” as they are often referred to in the world of birding, are everything during a Big Year. You can’t break records without a few surprises, and nothing shakes things up quite like extreme weather. Few people were wishing for bad weather in 2024 quite like Ross.
Most people probably wouldn’t choose the year their wife is pregnant and expecting a baby to do a Pennsylvania Big Year. But then again, Ross isn’t like most people. In fact, it was *because* I was pregnant with a due date in early July, that he decided to do one in the first place. His reasoning? “Well, if I can’t go international and have to stay in the state anyway, I might as well do a Big Year.” If that logic sounds a bit flawed to you, I can’t blame you.
Starting January 1, 2024, and running through December 31, Ross crisscrossed the state, chasing down birds and trying to see every local species, state breeder, and rarity that appeared. He was on a mission: see as many birds in Pennsylvania as possible in a single year. His secondary goal? At the very least, break the previous record.
It was a grueling endeavor—this is not a project for the weak or for anyone who loses motivation easily. (I’d also recommend a healthy dose of self-hazing for good measure.) Ross was constantly scouring rare bird alerts, tracking reports, and keeping tabs on various social media channels just in case something slipped through the cracks.
And then, on July 2nd—the very day we welcomed Harvey Leon Gallardy into the world—a Ruff showed up. I kid you not, I was literally about to start pushing when Ross’s phone started blowing up with alerts. Calls, texts, notifications—it was nonstop. Of course, I don’t remember any of that, since I was basically on another planet at the time.
Harvey was born 30 minutes after the Ruff was first seen, and that was one chase Ross had to let go. And he had a really, really good excuse.
Of the 50 states in the US, Pennsylvania ranks as the 33rd largest, spanning 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. It has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary, but no direct access to the ocean. If you squint, it’s basically call it a funny looking rectangle with an Erie-shaped hat.
The state’s five geographical regions—Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Erie Plain—make it a fascinating place to bird. Ross estimates that, in an ideal year, 340 species (or even more) could be possible. But without direct ocean access, seeing seabirds in Pennsylvania is tricky. Storms can help, but they aren’t guaranteed.
One of the biggest challenges of doing a Big Year is being able to drop everything at a moment’s notice and chase after a rare bird if one shows up. I’ve lost track of how many of my weekends — during spring migration, fall migration, or “rarity season” (October through December) — were abandoned because of a rare bird showed up somewhere in the state.
I’ve known Ross Gallardy long enough to know that when he sets out to do something, he’s going to do it. At the end of 2023, when he approached me with the idea of doing a Pennsylvania Big Year, I knew right away he would break the record. If his goal was to break the record, that was what he was going to do. Honestly, I never doubted it. Even when it was late August and he had missed a few rarities and he wondered if his goal was still attainable, I never doubted it.
For reference, the previous big Year record was set by Jason Horn in 2020 and he saw a total of 321 species, per eBird. (But Jason will say the record might be as high as 325 because he didn’t put a few birds that he thinks he saw, but wasn’t entirely sure, into eBird.)
One November Sunday Ross decided to go up to Little Gap in search of the few finches he was still missing for his big year. It was a solid two-hour drive, so he left early and spent the morning searching. And don’t you know—the second he got home, an Evening Grosbeak was seen an hour and a half away. He wasn’t home more than 20 minutes before dashing off after it.
But at least it wasn’t in Erie. Erie is a solid 6 hours away from where we live. When a rare bird shows up in Erie it’s an entire day of chasing. He chased after a Vermillion Flycatcher on one trip, a Roseate Tern on another, and a Marbled Godwit on another. Erie had multiple great birds throughout the year but thankfully Ross didn’t have to chase after all of them. (Some he managed to see closer to home.)
That being said, he still made FOURTEEN trips to Erie!! (One was of course for the total solar eclipse and while we were there having the second most incredible experience of the year, he was dipping a Townsend’s Warbler just 30 min from our house.)
Ross and I have two cars, but I hadn’t been inside our Ford Fusion in quite some time. Ross was primarily using the Fusion as his “birding mobile” while I toted the babies around in our Subaru Forester. So when we decided to take the Fusion somewhere Ross warned me, “It’s a mess back there.” He said and I quote, “It looks like I’ve been living out of this car like a bum” and immediately followed that up with “but that is by design.”
His car was full of coats and hoodies, various hats, a set of gloves, a cereal box (half eaten), and all of his birding gear — binoculars, camera, speaker, flash light, thermal, and a three-liter jug of water. If a rare bird showed up he wanted to be able to jump in his car and go, knowing that anything he might need was already in there. I kid you not, there were times that a report of a bird came out and less than two minutes later he was out the door. Rule #1 in chasing: if you can go, go. Waiting around, even for 5-10 minutes can sometimes result in a dip.
If I’m being brutally honest, living with someone whose emotions varied so widely based on bird sightings wasn’t always easy. I hesitate to compare it to something as serious as bipolar disorder, but I dreaded the days when a rarity showed up too far away to make by sundown, or when a bird was re-found after Ross had given up and come home. (Or when he stayed back to spend a Saturday hanging with me instead of going to Erie and a kittiwake shows up on the lake.) The highs were high but somehow the lows were lower and I absolutely hated to watch the wind being deflated from his sails.
Remember how I said the reason Ross chose this year to do a big year was because I was pregnant and we weren’t leaving the country? Well, we decided to leave the country after all while I was 6 months pregnant and ventured down to do some birding in the Lesser Antilles. During the one week we were gone 3 rare birds showed up! (Yes, I wrote up blog posts all about that trip, but might be a year until I can get those published!)
But looking back, the good outweighs the bad. Those “misses” weren’t make-or-break. His goal of breaking the record was achieved, and birders from all over the state rallied behind him. Seeing that camaraderie is something that makes me love the birding community even more.
When he started this big year Ross set a goal: see at least 330 species. By mid December he was still 2 birds short. And boy oh boy did I keep hearing about it.
By the end of the year all I was hearing about were gulls. Gull this. Gull that. Gulls were the best chance of ticking another two species. It was hours spent at various landfills across the state to get more time in amongst a sea of white birds in a sea of trash. Or spending time on lakes where gulls spend time.
If he hadn’t spent enough time at Van Sciver Lake enough already for the year (Ross spent $1,000 on a Penn Warner Club membership just to get access to Van Sciver Lake for the year) on December 27th he and a friend spent NINE HOURS there sifting through the gulls. No food. No bathroom breaks. Just 9 hours of gulls. (And by the end of the day, all he had to show for it was one Lesser Black-backed Gull that almost passed for a Yellow-legged Gull.
To be honest, the entire month of December felt like a bust. Ross went into the final month of his big year needing only two birds to hit his goal of 330 species and yet no rarities had shown up.
On December 28th I’ll never forget lying in bed talking about how he still needed two more birds and being reminded that he was going to “go hard” until the very end because this was a marathon but you always run the fastest toward the finish line. As we were lying in bed one night, I joked that “wouldn’t it be poetic if you got your 330th bird on the very last day of the big year?” I joked because that would be too perfect of an ending. The kind of ending you’d find in a movie or something.
But it turned out Ross didn’t have 2 birds to go. Truth was, he only had one bird to go. He had miscounted! He was currently sitting at 229, not 228 like he thought and he didn’t realize it until December 29th when he was cleaning up some eBird checklists and realized his math was wrong.
And just like that, the stage was set to get one last bird.
Ross had just arrived at Van Sciver (looking for gulls of course) when a text came through that a Barnacle Goose was at a lake about an hour away. He jumped in his birding mobile and raced there knowing that the geese would be heading out into the fields to feed which would make it increasingly harder to find. He arrived just 15 minutes before the goose flew off — never to be seen again. Bird #330 in the bag.
I could never write down all of the details that goes into an undertaking like this. And I didn’t even touch on half of the birds he saw or the things he did during the 365 days that he birded every single day. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Ross also participated in a Big Day (like a big year except you see as many birds as possible in 24 hours.) He’s always wanted to do a Big Day but didn’t plan on doing one during his Big Year. I’m not sure if Andy Markle knew when he asked Ross to join the team that Ross doesn’t do anything involving birds “half assed.”
If Ross was doing a Big Day with the goal of breaking the record, he was breaking the record, there was no “try” about that. So Ross added Jason Horn and Eric Zawatski to the team, drafted the itinerary for the day, and scouted ahead of time. (Of course Ross and team broke the PA Big Day record the same year Ross broke the Big Year record!)
There’s a bit of a science behind how Ross approached the year and there is a lot that was learned in the process. (You know there was an excel spreadsheet with every conceivable bird possibility listed and coded on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being common breeder all the way through 5, very rare.)
Ross knows that 340 (or more) species is possible. It takes stamina, strategy, and a willingness to drop everything at any moment. Ross managed to accomplish his feat while working a full time job as an operations and supply chain consultant, with a pregnant wife and toddler at home, and then after July 2nd, also a newborn. To say he was busy is the understatement of the year.
In the end 2024 never had an impactful hurricane. I guess all that worrying about where to sit wasn’t needed after all.
For those interested, Ross is putting together a slideshow presentation that dives deeper into the nuances of birding Pennsylvania over the course of a full year. He’ll cover details such as realistic species counts, the history of PA Big Year records, rarity occurrences, seasonal timing for specific birds, and strategies for planning a Big Year.
If your local birding club would be interested in hosting him as a speaker, please reach out! If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re happy to travel across the state (or tri-state area) to give a talk.
“You’ve got to be an optimist to be a birder. Maybe the next spot will have a rare bird.”
-Ross Gallardy