After all the scouting and note-taking, after all the study sessions and route-making, on World Series day everything happens just like this, from the wristwatch beeps that signal the 12:00 a.m. start to the last stragglers dragging toward the finish line at the old Cape May fire station 24 hours later.

Long before dawn, teams are speeding away from the Great Swamp with two dozen or more species. It's 1:45 a.m., and Frank Gallo of the Raven Luna-Ticks displays the exuberant mood typical of the early hours. "Rock and roll!" he shouts, to nobody in particular. "Game on!" In the Lagerhead Shrikes' van, Paul Guris is equally upbeat. "We kicked butt!" he says about the team's tally of bitterns and owls.

Meanwhile, the U-Terns, a middle-school team from Philadelphia, are watching a tow truck haul their minivan out of a Great Swamp mudhole. Last year the team found 157 species, four fewer than the all-time record for their age group. They've been practicing for months, hoping for a good day. "Hey, don't feel too bad," the tow-truck driver says. "This happens to somebody every year." The U-Terns finally motor out of the refuge at 2:45 a.m., far behind the other teams.

Like invading troops armed with thousand-dollar binoculars and ice chests full of Red Bull, teams fan out through northwestern New Jersey. Just after 3 a.m., the Shrikes strike gold along a dark road at High Point State Park on Kittatinny Mountain. "Toot-toot-toot-toot!" Guris calls in jubilation, "Saw-whet owl, baby!" It's the first time they've ever found this tiny, rare owl during the event. "We are good!" teammate Michael Fritz shouts—and then immediately edits himself. "Freakin' lucky, I mean."

Elsewhere in High Point, the smell of French fries drifts along a narrow mountain road, as if some backwoods diner had opened early to soothe teams' already-rumbling stomachs. In reality, it's the Philadelphia-based Bristleheads, driving a biodiesel Mercedes burning recycled vegetable oil. They see a certain irony in 500 people cumulatively driving thousands of miles and using untold gallons of gasoline to raise money for the environment. Unfortunately, good intentions now encounter harsh reality: The diesel engine makes so much noise at idle it's hard to hear bird song. If it's turned off it can't be restarted for a couple of minutes, costing the team precious time in an event where every minute counts.