For the past 10 months I have been ticking.
The goals I had for doing it were:
to maintain and enhance my ID skills,
to provide incentive to get me out bushwalking again
to investigate why so many people like ticking
to gain new species for my ACT tick list and have fun in informal competition
Some positive results were
My ID skills did improve substantially, to the level I consider I was at about
10-12 years ago.
I saw 15 new species for me, in the ACT.
-I saw birds that I would have commonly missed when bushwalking in the past eg
white throated gerygones, weebills
I did see a number of habitats/areas/sites that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
I was quite surprised that:
-many birds do stay in relatively small areas over a number of weeks, or
months, even non territorial birds
- you could often predict what birds should be present in certain habitat (eg
often I would think 'this looks like good speckled warbler habitat', and on
further searching there they would be.
Disadvantages were that
I wasted a lot more petrol.
As time goes on there is less incentive to watch the birds, and after seeing a
new species, more incentive to move on from that site, to tick 'new species!'.
This occurred mainly over the past 2 months.
I thought a disadvantage of ticking would be that I would 'flush' rare birds to
see them. Luckily I never felt the need to do that.
Over time you are less likely to report, or even notice, common species.
It becomes 'boring' to go to sites where you are unlikely to see 'new' species
and overall bushwalking becomes less enjoyable because you are always searching.
If someone else sees a new species there is a strong drive to also see that
bird for a tick, even if you are not interested in seeing that species.
You don't really add much to 'natural history' by ticking.
The future
I think now I have experienced being a tick addict. There are advantages for
ticking that I didn't know before, but there are disadvantages if you don't
keep it in check.
I am writing this down to encourage me to reduce ticking. Bird behaviour and
ecology have always been more interesting and hopefully I can focus more on
that.
Benj Whitworth
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