The 2025 June Challenge
By Rex Rowan
The birders in June won’t be nappin’
When a rarity comes a-flappin’.
They won’t miss the word
About a good bird —
They’re twenty-four-seven WhatsAppin’!
By Mike Manetz
Mike Manetz’s annual June Challenge limerick was spot on. I won’t go so far as to say that sitting at my computer and following the discoveries on WhatsApp was as exciting as actually being in the hunt, but it was pretty exciting nonetheless! Let’s say a WhatsApp post announces a rarity at Watermelon Pond in the southwest corner of the county. Oh woe, writes John in a response, I am many miles to the east at Newnans Lake! I will jump in my car and head across the county to Watermelon Pond! Forty-five minutes later, John posts a line of sad-face emojis and writes that the Watermelon Pond bird has vanished! Ten seconds later Trudy posts a sighting of a new rarity – at Newnans Lake! John writes, “Keep it there for me!” and jumps in his car and heads back to where he started from! Will he be successful this time? Will the rarity fly away the moment he pulls into the parking lot? Stay tuned! This maddening but not even slightly unusual bird behavior, appearing and then disappearing and then appearing again and then disappearing again and then appearing somewhere else – I’m looking at you, Willet! – played out day after day on WhatsApp during June. When Bob Wallace founded the Alachua County Birding Facebook page in 2013, this is exactly what he was hoping for: you see a rarity, a few seconds later you post your sighting, your sighting is instantaneously distributed to other local birders, and twenty people are enroute before you’ve even put your phone back in your pocket. Facebook turned out to be unsuitable for this because rare bird sightings got buried under highlights from the Gator game, a GoFundMe appeal from some guy who wanted to make the glazed doughnut the State Pastry, and seventeen pictures of your sister’s cat. So it’s proper to remember and recognize that it was Peter Polshek who spent years urging us to switch over to WhatsApp before we actually did it. Peter, you have our belated thanks.
The spring that preceded this year’s Challenge was not auspicious. Actually, since “auspice” means “an observation of birds for the purpose of obtaining omens,” spring was in fact extremely auspicious: finding migrants in April and May was like pulling teeth, and that’s always a bad omen for June birding. By late March the last mud flats on Paynes Prairie’s central basin were drying up, and by June they were gone. Preston Ballard wrote, “Ben Fick and I did about a 7–8-mile hike out there from Bolen Bluff on June 3rd. There was no water and nearly no mud at all. Just a sea of grass – quite tall grass, truly a prairie….I really wonder if Levy Lake or Barr Hammock or something might have mud somewhere? At this point I’m just hoping to even get a single Semipalmated Sandpiper. If anyone knows where literally any mud would be right now please do share.” There was in fact a little bit of mud left on the Prairie, not quite an acre, running along the east side of US-441 near Bolen Bluff. Initially it attracted great numbers of water birds, mostly local nesters like Mottled Ducks, Black-necked Stilts, and herons, but also Roseate Spoonbills (up to 50!) and two Blue-winged Teal. But a few days into the Challenge it started to attract a more exotic clientele: on the 4th a Caspian Tern showed up, on the 7th a Stilt Sandpiper, and on the 12th a Short-billed Dowitcher, only the second-ever June occurrence for Alachua County. A couple of other spots held enough water for a shorebird or two: Preston found a Lesser Yellowlegs at the Hague dairy on the 1st. Richard Kaskan found a one-legged Spotted Sandpiper at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 11th, a Greater Yellowlegs at Watermelon Pond on the 14th, and a Willet at the Butler Plaza retention ponds on the 26th. That was it for migrant shorebirds, six species, which is actually quite good for a normal June Challenge; we’ve been spoiled by the abundance of the past few years.
A bigger story than the paucity of shorebirds this year was the variety of terns. If we’re going to see several species of terns during a June Challenge, we usually require a tropical storm to blow them inland. But we didn’t have a tropical storm this June, and the terns came inland anyway, maybe just out of habit at this point. First – and I need to take a deep breath before I start typing – first was a Black Tern at Newnans Lake on the 3rd, then the Caspian at the 441 mud flats on the 4th (remaining through the 8th), a Forster’s at Lake Lochloosa on the 5th, a Least and three Commons at Newnans on the 6th, another Black Tern, this one at Watermelon Pond on the 8th, another Least and five Commons at Newnans on the 9th, two more Commons at Bivens Arm on the 10th, two Forster’s at Newnans, and yet another two Commons and a Least at Lochloosa on the 11th, a Sandwich at Newnans on the 12th through the 14th (only the second June occurrence in the county), a Royal at Newnans on the 14th, another Least at Newnans on the 15th, a Forster’s at Orange Lake on the 18th, and another Black at Watermelon Pond on the 19th. Toward the end of the month Tim Hardin arranged boat trips that found a Common Tern on Lake Santa Fe on the 21st and two Royals on Santa Fe on the 28th. That’s 29 terns of seven species. All in fair weather. And I’m not counting the many “tern sp.” that were too distant to identify.
Miscellaneous rarities were few this year: a Ring-necked Duck off the 441 observation platform during most of the month and five more at Barr Hammock, a Bobolink on the 1st, only the fourth June record for the county, a Brown Pelican at Newnans on the 17th and 18th and another at Orange Lake on the 18th, and an American Goldfinch at a Micanopy feeder during the first few days of the month and then again during the last few. Two birders who weren’t participating in the Challenge – I know, crazy, right? – saw birds that no one else did: Jonathan Mays saw a Gray Catbird in southeast Gainesville on the 19th and passed the information on to me, but none of the birders who looked for it were able to relocate it. And Jean Lansford photographed a Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the Idylwild neighborhood on the 3rd, the county’s first June record ever. Ms. Lansford did not notify anyone of this. Perhaps she foresaw the stampede of birders on her front porch and decided against it.
Sadly, the ultra-rare White-breasted Nuthatch that visited Geoff Parks’ yard on May 22nd didn’t stick around to be seen during the Challenge.
As usually happens, the last five days of the month saw the beginning of fall migration: the aforementioned Willet on the 26th, a Belted Kingfisher at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 27th, a Pied-billed Grebe at Sweetwater and a Louisiana Waterthrush along the Santa Fe River on the 28th, and a trifecta on the 30th, a Louisiana Waterthrush, a Belted Kingfisher, and a Black-and-white Warbler along the Santa Fe River on the 30th.
Eight times in the previous 21 June Challenges we’ve had a two-way tie for first place. This year it happened for the ninth time, and in addition we had our first-ever two-way tie for second place. Since that’s already four people, there was no third-place winner this year. Our first-place winners were Ben Fick, who holds the record for the second-highest June Challenge total ever (145 in 2023), and, for the sixth time in a row (!), Tim Hardin. We’ll be retiring Tim’s number in a small ceremony later this year, prior to inducting him into the June Challenge Hall of Fame. Both Ben and Tim saw 131 species. Tied for second place with 129 species were Preston Ballard and Dottie Dreyer. Preston, who is currently tied with Tim Hardin for the most bird species seen in Alachua County in 2025, discovered or was involved in the discovery of some of the Challenge’s best birds, such as the Sandwich Tern and the Short-billed Dowitcher. Dottie made a real impression on me a couple of years ago when she offhandedly mentioned that she had been wandering through the pines at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve at 11:00 at night, searching for (I think) a screech owl. My mind is still boggled by that. This year we also had an entry in the under-18 category, Ollie Flanagan. Ollie is 17 and a student of another Challenger, Ellen Frattino. Ollie vows to be back next year with a driver’s license and a car and will give all of us elderly folks a run for our money.
Everyone – not just the winners – should report his or her totals to FWC’s statewide June Challenge page here. The deadline is July 7th, so hurry! (Yeah, I know. My fault.) It takes about two minutes to complete.
On to the numbers. Taking all the winning totals from 2004 to 2025 and lopping off the two lowest and the two highest, the average of the rest is 118. We first beat that average in the ninth year of the Challenge, 2012, but we’ve beaten it every year since 2019, six years in a row. This year’s were the third-highest winning totals in the 22 years that we’ve been doing this. Anyway, here are the results. Ties are listed in alphabetical order by last name.
Ben Fick 131, Tim Hardin 131, Preston Ballard 129, Dottie Dreyer 129, Raci Ulusoy 128, Eileen Ahlquist 127, Ellen Frattino 125, Sharon Kuchinski 122, Bert Foquet 120, Mark Gorday 120, Anne Casella 119, Pelin Karaca 117, Pratibha Singh 117, Kristen Suggs 116, Tina Greenberg 113, Barbara Shea 111, Renee Slaw 111, Chris Cattau 109, Richard Kaskan 107, Austin Gregg 102, Jeanette Matheny 102, Bob Carroll 101, Glenn Israel 100, Diane Pruitt 100, Jerry Pruitt 100, Eric Link 98, , Tonya Becker 96, Rex Rowan 96, Becky Enneis 95, Emily Schwartz 94, Linda Holt 93, Judith Hunt 92, John Martin 89, Will Salmon 88, Cyndi Dunphy 86, Jamielee Thompson 84, Stephanie Hornbuckle 82, Tom Wronski 81, Anne Barkdoll 54.
Under-18 Category: Oliver Flanagan 53
We also had an out-of-county entry: Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. Richard Carroll 47. (Richard, age 14, is Bob Carroll’s nephew, and this is his third June Challenge!) (Good work, Richard, and good work, Bob!)
And here’s the complete list of bird species seen in Alachua County during the Challenge (not all were seen by all participants):
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Canada Goose, Muscovy Duck, Wood Duck, Blue-winged Teal, Mallard, Mottled Duck, Ring-necked Duck, Northern Bobwhite, Wild Turkey, Pied-billed Grebe, Rock Pigeon, Eurasian Collared-Dove, Common Ground Dove, White-winged Dove, Mourning Dove, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Common Nighthawk, Chuck-will’s-widow, Chimney Swift, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, King Rail, Common Gallinule, American Coot, Purple Gallinule, Gray-headed Swamphen, Limpkin, Sandhill Crane, Black-necked Stilt, Killdeer, Stilt Sandpiper, Short-billed Dowitcher, Spotted Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, Willet, Greater Yellowlegs, Laughing Gull, Least Tern, Caspian Tern, Black Tern, Common Tern, Forster’s Tern, Royal Tern, Sandwich Tern, Wood Stork, Anhinga, Double-crested Cormorant, American White Pelican, Brown Pelican, Least Bittern, Little Blue Heron, Tricolored Heron, Snowy Egret, Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Black-crowned Night Heron, Green Heron, Great Egret, Western Cattle Egret, Great Blue Heron, White Ibis, Glossy Ibis, Roseate Spoonbill, Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture, Osprey, Swallow-tailed Kite, Cooper’s Hawk, Bald Eagle, Mississippi Kite, Snail Kite, Red-shouldered Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk, Short-tailed Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, American Barn Owl, Eastern Screech-Owl, Great Horned Owl, Burrowing Owl, Barred Owl, Belted Kingfisher, Red-headed Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Pileated Woodpecker, American Kestrel, Great Crested Flycatcher, Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Acadian Flycatcher, White-eyed Vireo, Yellow-throated Vireo, Red-eyed Vireo, Loggerhead Shrike, Blue Jay, American Crow, Fish Crow, Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Bank Swallow, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Purple Martin, Barn Swallow, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Carolina Wren, Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Northern Mockingbird, European Starling, Eastern Bluebird, House Sparrow, House Finch, American Goldfinch, Bachman’s Sparrow, Eastern Towhee, Yellow-breasted Chat, Bobolink, Eastern Meadowlark, Orchard Oriole, Red-winged Blackbird, Brown-headed Cowbird, Common Grackle, Boat-tailed Grackle, Louisiana Waterthrush, Black-and-white Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Hooded Warbler, Northern Parula, Pine Warbler, Yellow-throated Warbler, Summer Tanager, Northern Cardinal, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Blue Grosbeak.
