LIttle Big Year Wrapup: Final total, top-10 best birds, and my plans for 2025!

Hi everyone and happy new year. I hope you see a lot of great birds in 2025. Well, my little big year, which was my 2024 quest to photograph as many birds as possible on my home patch, is now over. And so now it's time to take a look back and wrap things up, come up with a final total, and as well what I want to do in this video is talk a little bit about what comes next. So here's a little outline of what I'm going to talk about in this video. So first and foremost I'm going to tally up the remaining birds for my little big year and come up with a final total. I'll also talk a little bit about the birds that I saw or heard but wasn't able to photograph on my home patch. Unfortunately there weren't that many of those. Then I'm going to count down my top 10 favorite birds from my 2024 little big year, so that should be fun. And then at the end of the video I will talk about what I'm going to do in 2025, what comes next for the channel. I do have an exciting challenge planned for this year, so be sure to stay tuned for that one at the end. Okay, so just a little background for those of you who haven't been following along with my videos in 2024. My home patch is the Horn Pond Recreation Area, which is located in Woburn, Massachusetts, which is basically just a suburb of Boston, just north of Boston. It's a really nice birding area. It has a fairly large main pond and then there's a lot of smaller lagoons and streams around that. There's forested areas, there's also some rather open scrubby areas where there's a big power line cut that goes through, and there's even a community garden area which becomes a really nice birding spot in the fall. So overall a really nice place to bird and boy did I bird a lot there in 2024. So as of my last update video, which came out a couple weeks ago, we were up to 155 species and the species number 155 was actually common golden eye, which was a bird I had photographed way back in January of 2024. And then after that video was posted, four common golden eyes showed up on the main pond, you know, just a couple weeks ago. So I got some video of those which you can see here. They're pretty far away out in the middle of the main pond, but I do prefer to have video rather than photos whenever possible, so it's nice to get those on as a recent sighting. Then I also do have one brand new sighting to show for the little big year, and this is a nice one. This is a snow goose that showed up just a couple days ago on December 30th, so just coming in under the wire to be counted in my little big year. So this juvenile snow goose had actually been hanging around my local area for the last couple of weeks, spending a lot of time on a pond that's really just a couple miles away from Horned Pond. So naturally I and my other fellow Horned Pond birders had been hoping it would make an appearance over at Horned Pond, and that did finally happen just at the end of the year. So this is a juvenile snow goose. It's white, but not completely white, and this video was taken very early in the morning and in heavy rain, so it's obviously not the best, but fortunately it's a white bird, so it does show up pretty well. Okay, so the rest of the birds that I'm going to add to my little big year total are from photographs that I took earlier in the year, and in some cases, like with Common Gold and I, I was hoping that I would get something better during the year, and then that didn't happen, and in a few cases the original photo was really quite bad, and I originally wasn't going to count it at all, but I thought about it and I decided that, you know what, if I took a picture of a bird and you can actually see what the bird is and identify it, then I might as well count it. Let's go ahead and go through those now. Bird number 157 is wild turkey. So they're relatively common. I was hoping to run into a flock of them at some point and get some video, but that didn't happen. I was actually surprised how few sightings I got of wild turkey during the year. I just got this one photograph of one crossing across the path in front of me, but it's a good photo, so no issues there for number 157. Number 158 is great black-backed gull. Much less common than the ring-billed and herring gulls that we see all the time, but they do show up from time to time. Problem is that they're always out in the middle of the pond, so you never really get a close look at them. So fairly distant photos, but not too bad. I don't think there's any problem counting this one. So for number 159, it's quite an interesting sighting from back in January, and that's this long-eared owl that showed up right along a common path that people were using, and it was being mobbed by crows. This was one of the ones that showed up when I was at work. I had to tear down there, saw the bird for just 20 minutes or so, and then had to get back to work. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any video. The video would have been better than the pictures because of all the activity of it being mobbed by the crows. Very cool sighting, and that was a new bird for my horn pond sight list. Number 160 is blue-headed vireo. So this is generally a common spring migrant. It was a very slow year for them. I didn't get too many sightings this year. I didn't see any in the fall, which was kind of surprising. I did get these photos here. Good enough to identify the bird. Very clearly, that's what it is. They're not in perfect focus because of the branches, but we'll count that. That's number 160. For number 161, another pretty mediocre photo of a black-throated blue warbler. That's a shame. This is one of my favorite warblers. I just think they're really beautiful with the blue and the black, but you really can hardly see any blue on this bird because of the angle and because of the terrible light. But it's identifiable, so that goes in as 161. Okay, and then one more really bad photo here of a Wilson's snipe, which I took in very low light after sunset, I believe. In fact, it was kind of amazing that the camera was showing a lot more than just your eye could pick up. You can see the striping on the head and the long bill, so you can identify it. But, you know, clearly a very bad photo because of the conditions. Okay, so there you have it. The final total for the year is 162 species, and that is certainly a lot more birds than I expected to see during my little big year when I started out back in March of 2024. If you think that some of those pictures maybe I shouldn't count, like maybe that bad snipe photo at the end, let me know in the comments below. Curious to know what you think, but, you know, I did make the decision to count it in the end. So, inevitably, there were some birds that I saw or heard but wasn't able to get a photo of. And, of course, those don't count towards the little big year total because that was a list of birds that I photographed, but they still counted on my personal site list. And you might be curious what my final total was, you know, as shown in eBird or whatever. So, let's go ahead and go through those. And for these I've made a little list, and after each one I've put my lame excuse for why I didn't get a photo. So, the first one is American Widgeon, and my excuse was that I forgot my camera that day. So, you know, it showed up while I was at work. I didn't have my camera with me. I didn't bring it to work that day, and at the end of the day there just wasn't enough daylight to go home and get the camera. So, I went back to my home patch, saw the bird, but couldn't get a photograph of it. After that, I think I brought my camera to work with me pretty much every day for the rest of the year, just in case something interesting would show up. Next one is American Woodcock. If you know this bird, you know that it's a very hard to see bird, and you walk up to it and it kind of just explodes out of the leaves where it's kind of rustling on the ground. So, that's what happened. It exploded out from underfoot and flew away. And I really can't blame myself for not getting a photo under those circumstances. I was hoping I'd see one creeping around my home patch at some point later in the year, but I didn't. Okay, the next one is a Bank Swallow. And again, just flying around too fast, couldn't get a photo. It didn't show up for very long. There were a lot of other swallows flying around, and I kind of heard the Bank Swallow call and recognized it. I was able to get at my binoculars and see the little stripe that it has across its throat and identify it, but just couldn't get the camera on it. And then it flew away and I didn't see it anymore. Another one is Black Bernian Warbler. This is kind of a shame because it's a really beautiful warbler. It's one of those warblers that likes to stay up at the very top of a tree, and that's what happened here. This was the height of spring migration, and it was singing its heart out. Very easy to identify from its song. It was singing over and over again, and I could see maybe just a few glimpses of it. But this is basically a herd-only bird. I really didn't get a chance to get even a good look at it, much less a photograph. Another one that was actually quite disappointing is a Worm-Eating Warbler. So this is quite a rare warbler. This was the first one I had ever seen on my home patch, and it popped up right in front of me in a pretty heavily wooded area. Got at my binoculars, got a great point black look at it for just a couple of seconds, then it flew up in a tree, and I spent the next hour and a half trying to re-find the bird to get a photograph, and I wasn't able to. I know some people photographed it the next day, but I never did get a photograph of it, so that was a little bit disappointing. And the very last one to add is Eastern Screech Owl, which was a herd-only bird. I went out owling at night, actually just about a week ago in late December, and was able to hear a Screech Owl calling in the distance, but it was dark, no chance to get a photograph there, obviously. So my own personal total of birds identified on my home patch during 2024 then is 168, which is my highest total ever, not surprising since I did a little big year on my home patch. Okay, so let's move on to the next part of the video, which is my top 10 list of my favorite birds from my 2024 little big year. Now as you can imagine, having seen 162 birds, it's pretty hard to pick just 10 that are my favorites, but that's what top 10 lists are about, and I did that. So let's get started with number 10, which is American Pippet. So American Pippets are not terribly rare, but they are hard to find on my home patch, and what was nice about this one is that my friends and I had identified a particular area where we thought that American Pippas would really like that area and might show up there, and we kept checking it day after day for a couple of weeks, and then finally exactly where we were hoping they did show up. So that's always kind of satisfying when something like that happens. Okay, so number nine favorite bird from 2024 was Dickcissel. So Dickcissels are relatively rare in Massachusetts now. They're kind of a declining bird, and what's nice is my home patch, Horn Pond, is one of the best places in the state to find them. So they do tend to show up fairly often in the community garden in the fall, and fortunately that happened in 2024, and I was able to get this video of it. So it was kind of nice to show that and to talk up my home patch a little bit as, hey, this is a great place to find this rare bird. Okay, so number eight on the list is Broad-winged Hawk. So this is a relatively common raptor in the state of Massachusetts, but they're not real easy to see on my home patch. Usually you just see them soaring overhead, passing by. So I was quite lucky to come across this one that was perched in the open late in the afternoon in kind of a really nice setting here. I just love the the video and the photos that I got of this encounter, and so that's why this one made the top 10 list. So this is as good a time as any to quickly mention that I did make a 2025 calendar based on my little big year. I talked about this in my last video. I just thought I'd mention it again here, showing it here. So obviously this Broad-winged Hawk is the featured bird for the month of November in the calendar. So there is a link in the description below where you can buy the calendar directly from Shutterfly, and it doesn't involve me financially at all. It's just an opportunity if you're interested, if you follow the little big year. Okay, getting back to the top 10 list, number seven on the list is Sora. So Sora's are rails, and rails are always very difficult to find. They spend most of their time hiding in the reeds, and so I personally was very excited when I spotted this Sora pop out on my home patch and got a little video of it. It's not the best video in the world, but just the fact that I was the one that found it and I was able to share that sighting, and then over the next couple of weeks a lot of people were able to see the bird, fortunately, and it was a lifer for a lot of people, and so that was, you know, that's always felt really, really good. Number six on my list is Great Cormorant. The Great Cormorants are regular in the state of Massachusetts along the coast, along the ocean, but they actually are quite rare to show up inland, and my home patch is about 10 miles from the ocean. So it caused quite a stir when it showed up on my home patch, but then the bird just lingered and stayed around for not just weeks, but months actually. It just became one of the regular birds that you would see every day when you went to Horn Pond, and it would often just sit out on these open perches as you see here, and I think even a second one showed up. So there was just two of them, and it was just kind of fun to have this relatively rare bird just hanging around where everybody could see it for so long. So that was kind of cool. Okay, coming in at number five is Olive-Sided Flycatcher. This is a rather uncommon bird in Massachusetts and only the second one I had ever seen at Horn Pond. It was also fun seeing this bird with a bunch of other Horn Pond birders as we chased it around and finally got a good look at it perched up in this snag. Number four on the list is Brown Thrasher. This is another fairly recent sighting. I saw this one when I was making my final push to hit my secondary target of 150 species. So Brown Thrashers were on my home patch. I hadn't seen one in years, and this one was also very late, so it was really a surprise to get one at the end of October. What also made this bird extra special is that after disappearing for six weeks or so, not being seen, it then popped up again during the Christmas bird count that we did on December 15th. I just thought it was very nice of this bird to show up for us on the Christmas bird count, so that definitely gave me a warm feeling about this one. Okay, so number three on the list is Pileated Woodpecker. Now, Pileated Woodpeckers are common in the state of Massachusetts, or maybe I should say regular, but they have such large territories that you don't end up seeing them very often. But this one showed up on my home patch. What made this sighting so special is just how close it came to us. It just perched right at eye level, and we just got these amazing photographs and video of the bird, and so that was just really a special experience just to see this spectacular bird up so close. So that was really great. Number two on the list is Yellow-crowned Night Heron, and for this one we go all the way back to March of this year, just after I had started my Little Big Year. And Yellow-crowned Night Heron is very unusual. It was only the second one ever seen on my home patch, and for me personally it was a new one, a new bird I'd never seen on my home patch before. It was also the first unusual bird that I showed in my Little Big Year videos. I think it was in just the second video, so that was really cool. So very nice feelings about that bird. Okay, and so now we've counted them all the way down to number one. My number one favorite bird for my 2024 Little Big Year is Townsend's Warbler. So if you've been following my videos, I don't think this one will be much of a surprise because this one has it all when it comes to being a great bird. So first of all, it's rare. This is a vagrant Western Warbler that showed up on my home patch. In addition, this particular Warbler was extremely cooperative, showing up day after day in the same spot. I must have seen this bird, you know, eight or ten times while it was here, and so many people got to come and see it and just enjoy it. And finally, you know, it's a great looking bird, just a beautiful little Warbler. So that was just really a treat at the end of the year. Okay, so with that, the 2024 Little Big Year is wrapped up and in the books, and it is now time to look ahead a little bit. So what am I going to be doing in 2025 with this channel? So I do have an announcement about that to make right now. So in 2025, I am going to expand my horizons and I am going to challenge myself to photograph as many birds as possible in my home state of Massachusetts. So yes, it's going to be a Massachusetts Little Big Year, if you like, or a Medium Big Year. I don't know what I'm going to call it, but I'm going to try to get as many birds on film and show them in these videos as possible from my home state. And the target number that I set for myself is 250 species. So I'm going to try to see 250 species of birds, or photograph 250 species of birds in Massachusetts in 2025. That's going to be quite a challenge. It's going to be difficult. I'm going to have to visit a lot of different places and chase after some rare birds, but it should be fun. And I hope you'll follow along in these videos and join me for that adventure in 2025. And so this is a good time to mention that if you haven't subscribed to the channel and you're interested in following along, please do subscribe. I'd really appreciate that. So that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you real soon in the next one.