Season 3, Episode 5: 2012 Ontario Big Year with Andrew Keaveny

Welcome all to The Big Year Podcast.  I’m Robert Baumander and you’re, well, you.  It’s the end of July, 2025, and you know what that means?  Certainly an all new episode of the Big Year podcast, naturally, but mostly, we’re smack-dab in the heat of the summer and the lack-of-birds blues.  In July and August, it's more about the butterflies and bees than the birds in the trees.  

It's hot, humid, and clammy.  You get soaked with sweat and barely see or hear any birds.  Nothing makes you look forward to fall migration more than the heat of July and the dog days of August.  However, butterflies, bees, fireflies, and dragonflies abound.  So slow down, look down, and you'll see there are many tiny creatures all around.

And before you can learn what all of them are, it will be time for the shorebirds and warblers to return, fall migration will be in full swing and you can't forget all about those sting-y, bite-y bother-y bugs.

Now, that is not to say I didn’t seen any new birds in July.  The first week or so was pretty good, as I finally got to see that Brown Pelican.  Last month I was grousing about the fact that I had missed it in Niagara-on-the Lake.  But, wouldn't you know it, a week later it showed up on the shores of Lake Erie.  I raced down there the next morning, and within an hour, I finally got to see, photograph and enjoy my first Brown Pelican in Canada.

A rarity indeed.

That same day in Chatham Kent, I got to see a Lark Bunting.  Not unheard of in Ontario, but still pretty rare in any given year.  A few days later, I went to see a Short-billed Dowitcher and a Stilt Sandpiper in London, Ontario.  But since July 11th, no new birds have shown up and I can now just sit, wait and hope for those fall migrants, including that dastardly, fancy yellow warbler with the black cap called the Wilson's Warbler.  Maybe it should be called the Black-capped Warbler, or the How-the-heck-did-I-not-see-that-Warbler in the Spring Warbler. Anyway. Enough griping.

This month's episode has been a long time coming and it is dedicated to my birding pal, Andrew Keaveny.  Oh, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.  Why the lament?  Because according to my iMessage history, Andrew and I actually recorded this episode back in late February, or early March of 2023.  Sometime afterward, as I was going through podcast recordings to edit, I couldn't find that specific recording.  So I went on to other projects, recorded new ones,(didn't lose any of those), and occasionally searched my hard drives, iPads, iPhones, and sound recorder apps, looking for the original recording.

After a while, I just forgot all about it, as you do.  Sorry, Andrew.  Then, late last year, someone asked me about Andrew's episode that was already over a year overdue, and I went back to searching, thinking that it had to be somewhere, right?  Once again, I was searching old iPhones, hard drives, my sock drawer, and under the bed where I found only fluff and dust, which, I'm told, my brain is mostly filled with.

Again, no original recordings.  Again, sorry, Andrew.  Oh, and who is this Andrew Keaveny, you ask?  Most Ontario birders will have heard of him, but you haven't had the pleasure, Andrew is a long time Ontario birder, world traveler and guide, one of the most knowledgeable birders I know, an all-round swell guy, and a good birding friend of mine, whom I met way back in 2012.

I was doing my ABA Big Year, and Andrew was doing his Ontario big year.  The first time we met, I learned that he knew Sue from when he was just knee high to a Canada Goose, birding with his parents at Colonel Samuel Smith Park in Toronto.  Well, maybe he wasn't that young.  Since then, we have run into each other often while out birding or at rare bird sightings all over Ontario.  As well as at Colonel Samuel Smith Park in Toronto, where we always try to show up for new park species to add to our coveted Sam Smith Park list.  Not that anyone’s counting, but Andrew sits second all time with 256 species for the park and I am just behind him in forth place with 242.  Okay, yes, we’re all counting.

So back to the long and winding road to this episode.  In February of this year, I messaged Andrew, tail firmly between my legs, microphone in hand, to ask him to please, please rerecord the episode.  Unfortunately, he was under the weather at the time, and I never did get back to him about my podcast Mulligan.  Again, fluff and dust for brains.  I'd be right at home at a teddy bear's picnic, if you get my meaning.

But, I digress.  Fast forward to July of 2025.  Well, actually May, when out of the blue, he, Andrew himself, messaged me asking for a donation to his Bird-a-Thon.  I said I was happy to do it, but in exchange, we had to finally complete what we had started over two years earlier.  Andrew was game, and this episode is the result.  It's certainly more timely and up to date than if I had just found and presented the ne