birding-aus

The Biggest Twitch

To: "Rosemary Royle" <>
Subject: The Biggest Twitch
From: L&L Knight <>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 21:52:55 +1000
The challenge would seem to be a case of moving on so that you see an average of 11 new birds per day. It's a similar challenge to rogaining where you are trying to choose a route that will maximise the number of points you can collect within the allocated time.

It is very much a case of collecting the "low hanging fruit" so that you can whip through an area and catch the readily seeable birds. From memory, I think that there are 9000 species of birds in the world, so 4000 birds would be ~ 45% of the total . In Australia's case, 45% is about 330 species [need to exclude OS migratory birds to eliminate double-counting], which an organised twitcher could probably get in a couple of weeks. Other parts of the world may be harder work, so perhaps the twitchers could try to rack up 450 in Australia in a month to generate a bit of slack.

Ultimately, it is a case of $$$ as well as stamina, birding expertise and intelligent decision-making [based on the acquisition of many "where to find the birds of _______" books].

Regards, Laurie.


On 01/01/2008, at 9:29 PM, Rosemary Royle wrote:

Hi Birding Aussers,

You may be interested to know that two birders from Wales - Alan Davies and Ruth Miller - have just started an attempt to see the most birds in a year. The current record is 3662 and their project is called, not surprisingly, "The Biggest Twitch".

They have a good website and their progress will be logged on a regular basis. See
http://www.thebiggesttwitch.com/

Happy New Year

Rosemary Royle
Wales, UK

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