Root For The Home Teams

It is a local rivalry in the making. Two Washington teams head to the World Series of Birding, but only one will come out on top.

The DC Audubon Society is sending their new team "City Flickers" to go up against the more seasoned team of ornithologists from the Smithsonian Institution called "The Bushnell-Smithsonian Woodpeckers." Bushnell. Sponsorship. Let's root for the new kid on the block.

May 13th is the 23rd annual World Series of Birding in Cape May, New Jersey. It is a 24 hour race to see the greatest number of species and some take it very seriously. Like any other modern day sporting event many of the teams have rallied sponsorship, not surprisingly the sponsors tend to be binocular, camera, and lens oriented. Cape May is one of the great birding areas in the U.S. as it is the first/last land point across the Delaware Bay for bird migrating north/last and at World Series in the past the winners have seen over 200 species.

Last year around 1,000 people, comprised of 98 teams including children and teenagers, registered for the event, including the Snow Birds from Canada, a Turkish team and the four-times winning Nikon Team and hit the fields, woods, and beaches of New Jersey.

The ground rules are simple. Teams start anywhere in New Jersey at at 12:01 a.m. Saturday and finish up the following midnight at the Cape May Lighthouse.