Hi Tweeters

As many of you know Arden & I were in a Big Year Competition Fund Raiser for our local Audubon Chapter along with Eric & Tammy Bjorkman as they have recently sent an email to tweeters thanking everyone.

We too would like to THANK EVERYONE for your help over 2012 with postings on Tweeters, Inland NW Birders, e-bird and even by word of mouth. The generosity of people allowing us, as strangers, into their homes to view a rare species for the state was so appreciated. Our only connection was that we all love birds and want to share what we have discovered with each other. The advice from fellow birders as to where to find a bird helped greatly. We got to meet and know many great birders in the state and that was truly amazing to be able to put faces on the names that we have read posts from for years.

Our RECORD for the year was 370 species. Bjorkmans had 360.

We do have another sighting pending before the records committee.

Since the old record by Marv Breece was 359, we both went over that number. We set out only to do a fund raiser and hoped to reach 300 species knowing that whomever reached the 330?s would probably win the competition. To see 359 species was not even a goal let alone a thought. Little did we know when we started that this would be such an exceptional year for rare birds to the state thus a great year to do a Big Year. Having a Smartphone with the postings at your finger tips where ever you were was a necessity.

We could not have reached this number of 370 without the help of everyone posting their sightings and people allowing you into their private lives.

Our local newspaper the Columbian is doing an article and web spot on the 4 us and our Big Year that will probably run this Sunday, January 13th. We have been doing interviews and photo ops with them the past week.

Many have asked what are we going to do this year? Arden says more golfing, I say take better care of my yard plus doing some birding elsewhere in the country or world. As for a fund raiser, we are working on a short birding trip for our members to the Okanogan area. None of us are contemplating doing another Big Year....ever.

Sherry Hagen
Vancouver, WA
littlebirder at comcast.net