The making of a county birder is really the birding story of Matt Bartels. Matt is a Seattle birder, the WA Bird Records Committee Secretary, one of just 2 birders to have seen 200 species of birds in each of Washington’s 30 counties, and really nice guy who is my guest on the Bird Banter Podcast #83.
Matt didn’t really start actively birding until his young adult years, and he fell for the county listing bug from the get-go. Hearing his birding story is really the story of his county listing.
Matt also contributes to the WA birding community in many ways. He helps with the Marymoor Bird Walk along with Michael Hobbs and Brian Bell.
Matt has served as the WA Bird Records Committee, a key part of the Washington Ornithological Society, and as Brad Waggoner, a prior guest told me, carries the heavy load of getting the committee’s work done, recorded, and made public.
On the episode we talk about two birds the committee discussed in detail at the recent annual meeting. For fun here are links to information about the species involved:
Nazca Booby vs Masked Booby
Northern Giant Petrel vs Southern Giant Petrel
As you can tell the differences are subtle.
We talk about county listing as a pursuit. It can be fun, and a way to challenge yourself to explore your state more intentionally. I have had lots of fun in the last couple of years trying to find new species in all of the WA counties. This really began for me with a 4 day winter trip with Ken Brown (guest on episode 2), Ryan Weise and Bryan Hansen. This was to “get rid of the gray” on our eBird profile pages. At the time the WA map on eBird showed all the counties of WA with color coding for the number of species you have recorded on eBird in each county. A gray color denoted zero species recorded. All of us had birded Asotin, Columbia and Garfield counties at least a little, but all were before we started keeping rocords on eBird, so a trip in Jan 2019 added color to the Southeast part of our WA profiles. Read about the trip on the ABC Birding blog. Since then I have made trips to several WA counties, seen birds, roads and scenery I’d not seen before, and am starting to learn lots more about Washington State.
Here are some trip report links if anyone is interested.
Thurston County last week
Two reports on a recent winter eastern WA trip to Spokane, Lincoln, Ferry, and Whitman Counties.
Southwest WA County Birding this fall
Chelan in summer
These are just examples of the fun to be had chasing county birds in WA.
So much fun hearing Matt’s story, so until next time, Good birding and good day!