2026 First of the Year Birding Challenge

Every year, January 1 marks the beginning a new year for birding, when every species seen counts as new for the year. With the totals from the prior year wiped clean, we went out on our annual tradition to try and find the rarest birds in the state and get as high of a species total as possible. Join us on our journey as we tally birds both rare and common and see how many species we can rack up. *Some photos used in the video are not from the first, if we weren't able to get any media, or if the media was too poor to accurately reflect the species. Check out what everyone saw in our combined trip report! https://ebird.org/tripreport/459944 Join our FREE communities Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/15w41xWVZL/ Discord: https://discord.gg/bZXD6ZwhnH Special thanks to our members Liz McQuaid, Sarah Coffey, Scott, Barbara Cole, and Sarah! You can support us on Ko-fi here! https://ko-fi.com/badgerlandbirding Gear Links (As Amazon Associates or other affiliates we do earn from qualifying purchases) OM-SYTEM OM-1 Mark II and 150-600mm lens https://explore.omsystem.com/us/en/catalogsearch/result/?q=+OM-1+Mark+II Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 4K Digital Camera Used for most bird videos) - check credits as we do source some photos/videos elsewhere which is noted in the description https://amzn.to/3GZl3Mu Cayer FP2450 Fluid Head Tripod, 75 inches Aluminium Tripod Derek's lighter tripod https://amzn.to/3suX5CK Nikon D5300 Derek's vlogging and macro camera https://amzn.to/3HF8jeh Rode VideoMicPro Compact Directional On-Camera Microphone Derek's external microphone for Nikon D5300 https://amzn.to/3oH8YnS Connect with us! https://badgerlandbirding.wordpress.com https://www.instagram.com/badgerlandbirding/ https://www.facebook.com/BadgerlandBirding https://www.tiktok.com/@badgerlandbirding\ Thanks to Terry Sohl for allowing us to use his range maps https://www.sdakotabirds.com/index.html​​ Grosbeak in cover image by mirceax (Canva Pro License) Purple Sandpiper in cover image by Raymond Hennessy (Canva Pro License) Screech Owl in cover image by Danny Dugan (Canva Pro License) All other photos and videos by Derek and Ryan Sallmann Some photos used under the following licenses: CC by 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Public Domain (PD): https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/ #Birding #BirdWatching #BadgerlandBirding