In 2010, I'd been birding for just a few years, and had come across Washington Birder. It's a great site that includes county checklists and statistics on birding. It also includes annual list reports, compilations of people's tallies in various categories. What is the record for species seen in Yakima County in a single year? How many people have life lists in Wahkiakum over 150 species? Who has the highest county average?
One of the things that grabbed my attention was the inclusion of individuals who had seen over 150 species in a given county in a single year. The 150 mark is largely in place to keep things tidy - those lists could balloon quite quickly if it included year lists of 100, or 50. I thought it would be interesting to try to find 150 species in my home county, King, in 2010. By fall, I was in spitting distance of 200 species for the year and ended up reaching that mark, with a Harris's Sparrow as a cherry-on-top bird in December for 201.
In the years that followed, I kept working for life lists, with an aim to get over 100 species in every county in the state (accomplished in 2014). Along the way, I also added some counties where I got to 150 species in individual years - Thurston, Island, and Kittitas in the years 2012-14 respectively.
That year was kind of a crossroads. I wanted to get to 150 species in every county in the state, and eventually 175. But how to go about it? Those three years of slowly adding species to the list were a lot of fun, no doubt, but much of it left me wanting more. A trip through Adams County that was a little too early for this species, and a little too late for another. Stops felt incomplete, both in terms of geography, and in terms of the calendar.
So, the method I've been following since began back in 2015, with a year in Mason County. At the time, it was a relatively underbirded county, and I actually put together a year list that broke the previous record, with 181 (a number broken several times over since, including an effort by another birder in 2015!). I fell in love with the county deep-dive and have been doing it since.
Combo, corner pocket
What a combination of counties to tackle! Walla Walla is a county where the year list record stands at 263, the fourth highest mark in the state (behind King, Yakima, and Clallam). The combination of urban areas, the confluence of major rivers, arid habitat, farmland, and the Blue Mountains make this an absolute dream for birding. 150 species for a year in Walla Walla County is not a challenging total!
Columbia County is tied with the San Juans for the lowest year list record at 172. It's not a large county (ninth smallest in the state), and much of that is in the Blue Mountains. Beautiful habitat with some specialized birds, including owls and woodpeckers, but not habitat that leads to large numbers of species. Ducks?
Challenging, with few freshwater lakes. Shorebirds? Also tough, with no extended muddy areas to draw them in. The county does occasionally get some interesting migrants, but nowhere near the frequency of points west (Walla Walla) or east (Asotin), as birds choose to follow the Snake River and avoid the Blues. The county year record is also a little mysterious, having happened in days before the nearly universal use of eBird by county listers. So, the breadcrumbs are in some cases hard to hunt down. 150 could be a challenge. 175 could be possible. I believe both of those things. It's going to be fun. I believe that.
I've only recently started to combine counties, and this is by far the most lopsided combination of counties I will have done. Part of the strategy will be to get that 150 (maybe 175...?) in Walla Walla as efficiently as possible to ensure that I can pour as much effort as possible into Columbia. It's going to be hard, sitting in Renton, over 3 hours away from these spots, unable to make a quick run when interesting birds pop up! But that's how I do these years - they're "Big Years" but with some kind of balance applied. Monthly-ish trips, bird the wheels off of the place for a few days and get home. Rinse, lather, repeat.
So, strap in! We're off to the Southeast corner of the state this year. Should be a hoot.
Tim Brennan
Jan 4 (one day after finishing last year's blog, and one day before heading out for the first trip of 2025)
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