The Full Beto

Yesterday I announced my intent to bird all counties in Texas in 2019. I called it "The Full Beto" referring to Richard "Beto" O'Rourke's brag of visiting all Texas counties during his US Senate campaign. Man did I step into it with that. A small number of subscribers howled foul that I was getting political with that. Good lord, a tongue-in-cheek reference to a failed political stunt is hardly political. Its a good thing I didn't mention Mexico was going to pay for my gas!

Anyway; from what I can tell no one has actually done this. Just to keep it interesting I'm going to see what mark I can set for total county ticks. Total county ticks is the total of the species in each county, i.e. if I see Northern Mockingbird in all 254 counties that counts for 254 ticks. The biggest total annual Texas tick total I know of is a bit over 11,700 so perhaps 12,000 should be the goal for that? Wait, that's 47.2 species per county average! is that doable? Lets see!

Somewhere I recall seeing that the average distance across each county in Texas is 60 miles. So that makes it about 15,240 miles to visit each Texas county. I did 45,000 miles in my 2017 big year so that seems totally doable. 

To reach 12,000 county ticks I will need actually bird in most counties, I need to get close to that 47.2 birds in each county. In 2017 I recorded birds in 150 counties and average 34 species per county. I did make the century mark in 14 counties and 50 or more in 34 counties. I recorded only one species in ten counties. Many of those counties I know I traveled through multiple times, can't let that happen again!

Of course the weather has been bad the first two days of the year. Lets hope tomorrow I get a chance to chase a Rufous-backed Robin in Uvalde County