Working tonight on the pacing of park visits and the idea of super groups being on the ready. So from a pace standpoint doing pure math we can break down the year into 52 parts and that would give us a need to do just about 1.5 locations per week, but they are not all equal and birding heavy in the harshest winter months will not provide the most value. (Though I'm looking at 1 per week anyway in that time frame if possible for Mid-Nov to Late-Feb.) That means I should weight the parks towards the other 3 seasons. That by my count is 14 weeks of winter and limited birding potential. (Though low numbers can still be awesome in the boreal areas and necessary for a serious total.)
All of this led to me thinking about super groups being needed to "catch up" on the pace once I get into the early spring territory about March 1st. These would be key groupings that could be clustered together for a 4 park single day adventure. (More viable with longer light days.) Doing 2 with a hotel or camping event would allow up to 8 in a weekend, which would be a fast way to pick the pace up. It would allow roughly 2 hours or so of birding per park. Not ideal, for sure, but it would be a way to complete the minimum and still experience some type of trail experience. This would be a type of thing I'd need to consider if things got in the way and limited progress for any planned periods of time. Extended poor weather without the ability to shift areas or perhaps things just come up that limit me from a work standpoint, etc...
I also sketched out a May beastmode effort designed to "follow the warblers" in that it would be a 2 week span of time where I start in the south and gradually work my way up to the far north. During this time it would be 3 park circuits daily with a day of rest every 4th day or so. The finish would be a beastly north shore run for 3 days that hits all 8. During this span I'd be back home on the rest days and ready to run another circuit after rest.
This would not preclude other efforts on the parks targeted, just allow a maximum birding window for that key time period of 16 days in May. (Maybe from like May 5 to May 20.)
I already have some locations grouped as a large multi-day at the NW corner of the state which will be 7 locations minimum and I think targeting for something around June is best for that grouping. This should allow for key warblers to be on Big Bog and working territory and also keep the bugs from being utterly insane. Also this year will already have a ton of driving, I'm not so keen on hitting that NW corner more than once. Other places I can see multiple visits as time allows and seasons change, but the closest location in that quadrant is a serious haul no matter what.
In the end keeping super groups in mind will help to give me a opportunity to fall back into a viable pace. Some type of burst mode in May will really reduce the necessary insane pace the rest of the year and may even allow for duplicate visits to some key locations that I really enjoyed and want to experience again to a deeper level.
Math: If I super group May at 31 locations in 16 days that would leave roughly 42 locations for the other 11 months. I could easily do some local places yet in May with the other days and bring it down to something like 38 or so. If I've done anything leading up to May that would mean maybe 16 (1 per week) prior to May and give a remaining total of 22 for the second half of the year. I know that 3 will happen in July for family trip in a single weekend event. At 1 per week that would be an easy pace and not require a single super group the rest of the year. Many of those would also be local day trips viable after a work day with a 2 hour or less drive.
Some items are coming into clarity and I'll need fit the pieces together so that I've got a viable plan. My spreadsheets are sprawling a bit as I have then on my personal laptop, work laptop, and google doc cloud service all in various states as I try out different ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment