Local YMCA Teens Win Title in Grueling Sport

"Imagine a scavenger hunt, well over 600 miles in length, where your targeted items are moving, sometimes through treetops of dark forests, swamplands, tick-infested grasslands, beaches, or perched on half-sunken ships or porta-potties."

That's how the Upper Main Line YMCA's Environmental Center blog describes the World Series of Birding event its high school age team won on Saturday.

The playing field for this World Serie is literally the entire State of New Jersey for an event that lasts 24 hours.

It's a sport you won't see on a list of most school athletic teams. It may be a sport you'd never associate with kids at all. In reality contestants come in all ages.

More Grueling than You'd Imagine

Winning the World Series of Birding is a lot more difficult than it may sound on the surface. In fact the UMLY Blog describes the event as "grueling...." 

....Physically, mentally, and spiritually. Imagine being on a road trip with even the best of friends. After six or seven hours, the endearing quirks suddenly transform irritating habits. This is team building at its best. Physically, this can be a marathon, with sprinted hikes over tree logs, creeks, and through bogs. This is not a leisurely stroll in the park.

Timing is of the utmost importance. Spend too much time at your 2:00 PM stop and you don’t make it to your scheduled 8:15 stop until 8:30 PM and you’ve lost daylight as the sun sinks below the horizon. Mentally, you need to pull out and translate the one bird song you hear in the distance, while its being droned out by the cardinals, blue jays, and Canada Geese that you already tallied eight hours earlier.

Once you identify a species, you do not count it again.  As the day progresses, the rate of tallying new species slows. What starts at a break-neck speed at dawn, tallying over 40 species an hour in the morning, turn to a three species an hour type afternoon. As the clock ticks down, this can crush the motivation of even the most cheery optimists.

New Jersey is a Giant Rest Stop

New Jersey may be more famous for its turnpike rest stops than for birding, but it turns out that the Garden State is a near perfect rest stop for birds migrating north during the spring. Some are flying from as far away as South America bound for summer destinations ranging from North Jersey to Canada and the Arctic Circle.

The Upper Main Line YMCA Environmental Education Center Blog has a full description of the event and photos.

You can also read the full story of the World Series of Birding win here on the UMLY Blog.