The Big Day: 2026
How many birds can you get in a single day in one North Dakota county?
The best thing about spring in North Dakota isn’t the warmth and a change in the temperature. It’s the arrival of birds. And, most people don’t think about birds when it comes to North Dakota. Actually, people are surprised when they hear about how many birds we can get here in the state. As of today ( May 5, 2026), North Dakota has 416 species of birds logged in eBird. Whereas, Fargo area or Cass County has 327 species of birds, only Grand Forks County has more birds than Cass county (335).
Having said that, you probably are wondering how many species of birds you can get in a single day or birding in Cass county? Well, the number will surprise you.
11:30 pm, May 19, 2026 Wednesday
I was trying to get some sleep before waking up at 1:45 am to get ready and hit the road. I had to pick up Trebor before we headed to Torre’s house where Keith would meet with us. The plan was to hit one of the ‘wetlands’ closer to us. Interestingly, Fargo area doesn’t have much for lakes. You’d have to go about 20-25 miles S/W to see any form of water bodies. This Horace ponds, in recent years, has been a goldmine for birding in the area. The birds we were expecting to hear around the ponds were, as Trebor likes to call them “SMBs” or the Secretive Marsh Birds.
As we drove on this muddy road, thanks to the recent rain, we flushed a shorebird of some kind, could’ve been a Killdeer, could’ve been a Wilson’s Snipe! Or even an American Woodcock. Who knows?
The temperatures were low, we had a freeze warning that morning, I think right around the time we got to the ponds, it was around 34 F (1 Deg C). But, there was no wind so it didn’t feel that bad. The usual drive to the ponds were, as young people nowadays say, muddy “af”. So we decided to park the car ways out and collect mud in our boots. I had almost thought of buying a muck boot the night before but I never wear those and just buying a ~$100+ boots for one morning sounded ridiculous in my head. So decided to go with extra boots instead, which I forgot to transfer from my car to Torre’s car anyways. The good thing was, it wasn’t as rainy and wet as last year. My legs did get pretty wet and cold as we started the forest birding, but they warmed up pretty soon as well.
At the ponds we heard Canada Goose, Mallard, Killdeer, Sora and a Least Sandpiper. No rails of any kind. The ponds weren’t as productive as we were hoping it to be. Our next stop was Heritage Hills Park in southern part of Fargo. We were hoping to pick up Eastern Whip-Poor-will, Barred Owl, Northern Saw Whet Owl1. We had picked up Great-horned Owl at Torre’s house just before leaving.
We got to the parking lot and started listening for the owls. Surprisingly, we heard a Screech-Owl. Which is always a good bird to find, prior to this year, screech owls have been tough birds to find in our area. This year on has been using a cavity in one of the parks that was on our route, but it was definitely great picking up the bird right there. We tried playback for the Barred Owl and a minute or two later a giant blob of something flew and landed in a tree in front of us. Sadly none of us had a headlamp or flash light of any kind so we didn’t get the best of looks. But the night was bright enough that we could see the face of and the shape of the Barred Owl through the binoculars. No whips or any other birds in that area either. We tried a couple of other locations for the whips and a slough for Virginia Rail but no luck there as well. Our first stop for post-sunrise or daylight birding was at the Forest River park. Right around 4:50 am we stopped at a nearby park to listen to anything we could find and rightly so we heard a Northern-saw Whet Owl tooting! Another year of Saw-whet breeding in our area.
It was nice to get all the owls checked off before we started our forest birding. As we pulled into the parking lot of Forest River, the Robins were at full swing as noisy as they can be. The Red-winged Blackbirds were singing as well. However, the most interesting of the song we heard was that of a Wood Thrush. Wood Thrush are notoriously hard to find in Cass County. But the last 2 years, we’ve had them in decent number. Exactly 364 days ago from this day we had 3 of them singing on our previous big day. Forest river was birdy! We were hearing tons of birds. As we were wandeirng around the parking lot trying to listen to various birds, Torre and Trebor heard an Eastern Whip-poor-will. As per the Big Day 5% rule, we were allowed to miss a few bird species. That was my (and Keith’s) first miss for the day. We picked up a decent number of Warblers from Forest river. Another highlight for the park was a Red-shouldered Hawk. Just like the Wood Thrush, Red-shouldered Hawks are hard to find in the county, or maybe not detected enough? either ways until the week before I didn’t have RSHA for the county and within a span of a week I had seen 3 (or 2…maybe the same individual because all 3 were juveniles).
After Forest River, we went back to Orchard Glen to get some warblers. FR can be really good at times for warblers, especially a good place to pick up a Connecticut Warbler. We had one during the 2024 Big Day. We did pick up really good birds but not the Connecticut Warbler. However, when we were at the parking lot, I briefly got a look at a Towhee, barely got to see the head and no other fieldmark. We waited for as long as we could to get the bird back to doing Towhee stuff but we didn’t have the whole day so we left. Spotted/Eastern Towhee! Which again is a good bird for the county.
Next park on the list was Iwen park, another location that can pull some amazing birds depending on the days. It was around 8:30 am in the morning when we reached Iwen, it was starting to get warm and my feet was getting back to being dry again. We picked up quite a few sparrows in an around Iwen park.
Oak Grove and Trefoil park in north Fargo were the next parks that we were about to head to and if you’ve ever thought about birding in Fargo during spring migration, keep those 2 places in your list of places to bird. Those can be Birdy af! Sabina (my wife) and I had a Golden-winged Warbler and a Northern Parula the evening before and we were hoping they’d stick around, and they did. Interestingly enough, this year we’ve had a huge surge of Golden-winged Warbler and the Northern Parula. We picked up a Blackburnian Warbler and a surprise Blue-winged Warbler. We still needed a Canada warbler, so I was working up this made up trail along the river. As I got out of the thickets, I saw Trebor and Keith working their way up some trees, I think Bur Oaks? Not so good with trees. At that time we heard an interesting song that was buzzier, and again I suck at bird sounds. But both Keith and Trebor are good at it, but we all wondered about what it was for a while. And it was a species that’s very hard to get in the county as well and I’m definitely not used to seeing that bird a lot, that actually would’ve been a county lifer for me. But we got our eyes on it and Trebor and I saw it briefly and it was all yellow and wings had a tinge of grayish blue and blurry wing bars. We went “Is that what we think it is?”
We spent a decent time to re-find the bird, it was singing constantly so I had my Merlin recording the bird and finally we all go to see the bird! It was a Blue-winged Warbler! What a good bird to get for the Big day.
The day was still long, but that probably was already the bird of the day!
Trefoil gave us plenty of good birds and a lot of warblers a few species of sparrows and we headed to the Fargo Lagoons from there. We picked up a good number of birds at the Fargo Lagoons, including a Cackling Goose.
I wish I had kept track of how many birds we had as the day progressed so I could have written the number here. I did have a trip report going on so I kind of knew, I just didn’t write the numbers down until we left the city area to head out west. By the time we left Fargo and were heading out west, we had 119 species. We had to beat 2025 Big Day number and we still had good number of species to get out west. I was feeling good about it. It was hard to say but it felt like we were doing better than last year.
Fargo area doesn’t have much for lakes or wetlands, the only place you can get lakes or wetlands in the whole county is the western part of the county bordering Barnes Co in the west and Ransom county to the South. Basically the lower left corner of the county. It’s about 1 hours drive and I don’t go there as much as I should. I just wish we had that area about 20-25 minutes away from us. I wonder what rarity is missed in that area just because its not birded as much. There’s probably a Ruff, a Red Knot, Eurasian Wigeon, Garganey that hangs around the lakes in that area that are missed every year. Anyways, Torre and Keith had found Black-necked Stilt few days before the big day, and we were hoping to pick those up (finger crossed). Apart from those, we didn’t have much for shorebirds and one of the locations in that area has been very shorebirdy. One of the place there is so good, I named the location “Good Shorebird area” until it was renamed as a hotspot with the actual name of the lake. That place is one of the very few places to get a Ruddy Turnstone.
Trebor had 2 different locations where he had found Say’s Phoebe the week before or so and we hit those spots to see if we can re-find the bird, but no luck with that. But by that time, we were already up to 154 species for the day. We only needed 4 more to beat last years record! I didn’t tell anyone that, I was going to keep that a secret until the end of the day. But, we were almost running out of species. We tried a few spots for an Upland Sandpiper, they didn’t pan out. We tried a few spots for the Least Bittern and Sedge wren, that didn’t work either. As we were driving on random roads to find these species, at point Keith was driving along this road, I saw something that looked different from the side of my eye. I wasn’t sure about it but I asked Keith to stop and back the car so we could look at this odd looking bird. It just felt like it’s a bird I don’t see a lot so it looked different. It could’ve easily been a Western Kingbird. But the GISS about it was different, and it did turn out to be a Say’s Phoebe!
As we were making our way back to Fargo we picked up a Green Heron. Interestingly, almost close to Fargo, on the side of the highway, I again saw some birds that looked odd and more like plover, since we didn’t have any plovers I told Keith to stop again. Someone said, “You sure it’s not just a Killdeer” Trebor had a good look too and we both replied, Nah it looked more like a Plover. So as we drove back, turned around and scanned the area for the Plover, it ended up being Upland Sandpipers. Two Uppies just chilling in the middle of an agricultural field! Back in Fargo, we picked up an Osprey nesting on a cell phone tower. After that we were supposed to go to the Horace Ponds again to end our day, but as we got back we saw that they had blocked the roads to get in there. So we had to change our plans and head back to Forest river. We did have a good chance of picking up a Common Nighthawk at the Forest River park and a swing by a house with Purple Martin nest boxes on the way, which we hadn’t seen that morning. We got both! As usual, the tradition to end the Big Day is to drink a couple of beers at the dike in Iwen Park, so we headed to the Iwen Park.
By that time, I hadn’t checked the trip report as well, but I knew for certain that we were over 157 species for the day. We had broken the record. I asked Trebor if he thought we did better or worse than the previous year? I think he replied, I feel like we did to slightly better but it might be close? To that, I told him he’d be surprised. Which threw him off in the other direction. When I asked him what our number was he said 149?
At that time, we already had 163 species + 2 other taxas, with the Towhee and Alder/Willow. And, I knew that I might have missed a few species on eBird so we could easily get one or two more species at the end of the day.
165 ± species to end the day! Not only did we break the previous years record we almost got 8 more species. So the day ended on a good note. We left Iwen around 10:15, by the time I picked up my car and I was home it was almost 11:20. We had a solid 18 hours of birding!
Torre had the paper checklist, the next day or so, he texted the group and said we had 168 species! I went back and checked my eBird, and I swear it took me hours to not figure it out. So Trebor and I started sorting out all the birds and figured out that I was missing Broad-winged Hawk, the Red-shouldered Hawk and the Red-headed Woodpecker in my eBird list! I can’t remember what was the other species that was missing on my list but we did figure it out! We ended up with 167 species and 2 other taxas, so a total of 169 species for the day! That is a really good number.
It is going to be really hard to get 170+ species next year, but we will get there! 175 for 2027!
What was your guess? Were you close enough? Isn’t it crazy that you can get almost 175 species of birds in Fargo (Cass co) in a single day? And we missed out on a Wilson’s Snipe, Eastern Phoebe, American Bittern, Solitary Sandpiper and a Canada Warbler…which are relatively easier species to see. Funnily enough, we had 2 Solitary Sandpipers and an eastern Phoebe the day before. But again, what is a big year with out a big miss? Every year, we have a species, a rarity that we pick for the big day and I had a Blue Grosbeak, which we didn’t find. But for next year, we we’re going to have the miss of the day as well. I think that is going to be fun. The miss of the day definitely was a Wilson’s Snipe! They’re just every where during a normal day!
Here is the trip report if you are interested : https://ebird.org/tripreport/525920
It wasn’t sure if Northern Saw-Whet Owls breed in Fargo. Well, I have seen many photos of people posting fledgling NSOWs from Southern Minnesota, and if they breed in southern latittude than us, they should breed here to. And, they’re in thick numbers here during winter. But 2 years ago, during our big day, we were at Forest River park, listening for owls, whips and passing time. A small animal of some kind fly right past my head. It was at 3 am in the morning so I didn’t see what it was, all I knew was it was an animal. My first guess was a bat. I said, is that a bat? Torre and Keith saw that thing too. But, not body got a good look. A few seconds later, we heard “Toot toot toot toot” of the Saw whet owls. At that time we assumed that it was an adult saw whet, which that particular individual could’ve been. But we didn’t pay much attention to that bird and continued our birding after tha surprising encounter. Later that afternoon a colleague of mine sent me a photo and asked if it was a NSOW, I looked at the photo and it was a fledgling NSOW! They had found 2 fledglings. That was the first confirmation of NSOW breeding in Fargo area.
Holy wow! Congrats on an epic day!!
!Increible! Don't know that I've ever done a Big Day anywhere and topped ~141. Torre always brings the magic. Congratulations on a spectacular day, Anuj!