2015 was a very eventful year for me. I retired at the end of August, my Dad passed in August, and I had both lots of time to travel and tried to accumulate a Pierce County year list.

Here were some of the birding highlights:

Pierce County: I got to know Bruce Labar much better this year. He was very helpful in showing me some new Pierce areas, sharing sightings, and having some fun birding together. Probably the best “new” area was the back route to Grand Park near Sunrise were we relocated American Three-toed and Black-backed Woodpeckers on a couple of hikes there in the summer, and I saw the “Park”, really a giant meadow, for the first time. It is really Grand. Mountain bluebirds everywhere, Golden Eagle soaring, vistas to enjoy, and great hikes. Other cool birds were Northern Pygmy Owl both on the hikes to Grand Meadow and early in the year at the Ashford Park, the female King Eider Bruce located on Ruston Way, Ruffed Grouse in Graham, a Black-bellied Plover in Tacoma at Alexander, and totaling 212 species for the year despite quite a few misses including no Black Scoter, missing a few rarer vagrants while travelling including the BTBW at Gog-li-hi-ti.

California: I spent a bit of time in CA this year, adding a couple of ABA lifers, Bell’s Sparrow and Yellow-footed gull at the Salton Sea.

Texas: Kay and I spent 2 weeks in Texas at the Lower Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival and a week following that. It was a great trip, with highlights of adding 7 ABA lifers for me. Maybe the coolest was the Northern Jacana at Choke Canyon.

Arizona: Bruce Labar and I spent 4 days in SE Arizona in Mid October, and had a delightful trip. The canyons there are just amazing, and although we missed on some targets including Montezuma quail and Rufous-crowned warbler, we did get great looks at the Sinaloa Wren, Tufted Flycatcher, Arizona Woodpecker and Lucifer Hummingbird. I was able to hear a distant Whiskered Screech Owl at Ramsey Canyon.

Cross-Country Drive: Kay and I drove Dad’s Lincoln MKX across country and had a nice though very hot trip in early September. We got to see a few cool off-peak season birding spots including MaGee Marsh in Ohio, and the Platte River in Kansas, but the only lifer of the trip was the introduced Eurasian Tree Sparrow near St. Louis.

Maine Whale Watching Trip: We got great looks at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, but for birds the highlights were hundreds of Wilson’s Storm Petrels, and nice comparisons of Great Shearwater and Cory’s Shearwaters. Cory’s was a lifer for me.

Overall a really great birding year for me. I added 24 ABA lifers, the most in many years for me, far surpassed my initial goal of >200 Pierce County year birds, was in the top 100 ABA 2015 e-Bird listers, a total surprise to me pointed out by Diane Y-Q. I ranked 99th at 475 ABA species this year.

We also made trips to Nicaragua to visit Kay’s brother Keith, and I saw just 41 species in the time there, though not a birding trip. We did better in Yucatan, seeing 126 species there, including hundreds of American Flamingos at Rio Lagartos.

Next year my goal is to try to add 14 ABA species to get to 700 life species.

Happy New Years to all and good birding.