Each May, the good folk at Global Birding, Tim Appleton and Penny Robinson (who also happen to be our Patrons), in conjunction with eBird, hold a Big Day event.
This year we surpassed ourselves with contributions from Anguilla, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Mongolia, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and the UK we managed to secure third place in the world teams list.
In total 7,737 species were seen collectively, so we saw over 10% of all the species seen!
Some of these lists were carried out around people’s local area, indeed some were backyard lists. Others though went out to various locations within reach of their home at all hours to secure the maximum number of secies to include some nocturnal or crepuscular species. In particular Adrian Boyle and Linda Bird in Australia put in a long day in the field starting during the hours of darkness and even ticking off a Black-winged Kite while it was roosting in addition to nocturnal species such as owls, nightjars and frogmouths.
We would also like to make a special mention of Bruno Lima and Karina Ávila in Brazil, who not only put in a long day themselves, also recruited a good number of others in Brazil to join the team. Brazil being the tropical paradise it is not surprisingly topped the species list with a magnificent 166 species but South Africa (133), Australia (126) and the UK (123) also managed to get over the 100 species mark. That said EVERY list contributed something unique to the team list so we appreciate everyone’s effort.
Countries in Alphabetical order
Anguilla – 50 species
Jackie Cestero
Elizabeth Bell
Keegan Miskimmin
Australia – 126 species
Adrian Boyle
Linda Bird
Brazil – 166 species
Karina Ávila
Bruno Lima
Marcio Motta
Andrew Simpson
Marcio Carvalho
Milena Corbo
Israel dos Santos
Bruno Neri
Clarisse Odebrecht
Bulgaria – 60 species
Liudmila Karukina
Canada – 57 species
Suzanne Beauchesne
China – 96 species
Katherine Leung
Chris Hasell
Rainy Cai
Tong Mu
Mongolia – 62 species
Batmunkh Davaasuren
New Zealand – 11 species
Marie-Louise Ward
Portugal – 52 species
Jack Delabye
South Africa – 133 species
Sue Oertli
Jenny Sharland
Peter Sharland
Niall Perrins
Spain – 70 species
Yanina Maggiotto
Pedro Culiañez del Fresco
Sweden – 56 species
Honor Prentice
Karin Johnson
Thailand – 92 species
Jens Toettrup
United Kingdom – 123 species
Rick Simpson
Elis Simpson
Roberta Goodall
Phil Hadley
Karen Hadley
Hopefully we’ll be able to persuade everyone to repeat the effort again next May, and, if we can recruit a few more poeple, especially from different regions, who knows, perhaps we’ll be able to topple the top two teams which were, lets face it, not that far ahead of us?
Thank you again to everyone who participated as part of WaderQuestTeam, See you next year but don’t forget, we’ll be counting on you all again and many more beside to make this year’s Wader Conservation World Watch in November an equally big success?
