Congratulations to Dave and Jill for their great showing in the Chili 
Challenge. We gave them a good run, but it wasn't quite enough. To all 
those who wanted to see someone else win, I can only say: Maybe next year.

My main reason for doing the Challenge was to give myself some 
motivation to get out birding more often. It certainly worked – I got 
out much more than in the past few years. This was my first year doing 
the Challenge, and I guess my biggest surprise, although that’s probably 
not the right term, was remembering how hard it can be to actually see 
many of the passerines. Aves confuseus had eight species that we 
couldn’t count because they were heard only – Black-billed Cuckoo, 
Winter Wren, Veery, Northern Waterthrush, Hooded Warbler, Wilson’s 
Warbler, Grasshopper Sparrow, and Henslow’s Sparrow.

It seemed that there were quite a lot of rare species seen this year. 
But maybe that’s just because I was paying more attention. My perception 
has been that I expect the rarities to show up far more often in fall – 
frequently first-year birds wandering off course. At any rate, four new 
species in one year strikes me as quite good. Was it only four - since 
we have only a handful of documented spring records, has Baird’s 
Sandpiper been recorded before?

At any rate, with spring migration winding down – although it’s not over 
just yet – it’s time to start thinking about breeding bird atlases. Both 
Indiana and Ohio are in the middle of their second atlas projects. I’m 
the regional coordinator for this part of Ohio, so if you have any 
interest in participating, please contact me.


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Ned Keller
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