Re: A national twitchathon

Lawrie

Yes. I know you are teasing.  

I completely agree about efficiency.  The route the Whacked Out Woodswallows use takes advantage of hotspots, a principle that all planned twitchathon routes use.  We wouldn't get anywhere near the final tally of birds if we just started that far west for the hell of it.  The route is highly planned and incorporates sites that will yield as many species as possible that will not be seen on the Sunday.  As any twitchathon route planner is aware, it's not much point seeing 120 species on the Saturday afternoon if you are going to see almost all of them again on Saturday.  You need variety and this generally means covering as diverse a range of habitats as possible.  Naturally, you need to know where the birds are, or how to find them quickly, once you get to that habitat.

I might sit down this weekend and work out how many birds we only see on the Saturday and Sunday and how many are seen both days.

A good twitchathon route is a work of art.  It's interesting in the two years of the Whacked Out Woodswallows we have notched up 237 species (although our Sunday route has changed a little, the start and end points have remained the same).  There has been a number of species also seen before but not during the twitchathon on our route.  There is obviously room for improvement on our route but it remains to be seen whether luck will allow that.

Cheers

David Geering

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