Two days before the big day, Frank Gallo is eating a late-night omelet in a smoky diner in Milford, Pennsylvania, a small town just across the Delaware River from Sussex County. He's captain of the Raven Luna-Ticks, a Connecticut team that's finished high in the World Series several times but has never won. Gallo feels this might be their year. Beside him sits Eric Pilotte, a member of the Lagerhead Shrikes. They've come from a "swap meet," where scouts get together over pizza to trade information—the idea being that, since the real point of the World Series is to raise money for conservation, sharing news of rare birds lets more teams find them on the big day and add to their fund-raising success. As longtime Sapsucker Ken Rosenberg says, "A rising tide lifts all boats."

But maybe some boats more than others. "We shared everything with Cornell last year," Gallo says, "and then they beat the crap out of us."

It's no secret that teams hold back a few special species for themselves. But Gallo isn't the only one who thinks Cornell's victory margin in 2006 meant the Sapsuckers had an unseemly number of aces up their collective sleeve.

Ken Rosenberg knows the mood of the competition. "The other teams all hate us," he says matter-of-factly as he scouts spruce woods on a sunny afternoon in Delaware Gap National Recreation Area. He hears the tinny beep-beep of a red-breasted nuthatch and pencils a comment in a notebook that contains more than a decade's worth of competitive minutiae: places he's found birds, mileages between sites, the time of day when each species sang.

Many participants see the World Series less as a competition than as a vacation—a chance to renew friendships, share a six-pack after a scouting day, and generally schmooze with like-minded souls.

"I'm past the social part," Rosenberg says, shaking his head, dead earnest. "This is a big fund-raiser for us. We take it seriously. We're here to win."