Perhaps its time we put together the annual twitchers award. What
could we name it? How would we judge it?
On our recent pelagic from St Helens Tasmania, Westland Petrel was
discovered. From 20 Nm off-shore using CDMA mobile a telephone call to
Mike Carter was made at about 1.00pm EST. Almost immediately Mike
posted the presence of the bird on Birding-aus and also made some phone
calls. Before midnight, that is less than 11 hours later, Rohan Clarke
was in town, traveling from Melbourne by air and hire car, ready for the
06.30boat departure at the wharf.
St Helens is 160 km from Launceston airport and is no easy drive at
night. His effort paid off and we were able to locate again the
Westland Petrel and perhaps Rohan thinks observing the bird is reward
enough however his effort impressed some battle hardened local fisherman
who said it was good that we saw a rare bird but for a bloke to come
here the next day after a phone from sea about a muttonbird, that really
impressed us.
Perhaps we could develop a point scoring formula for assessing a twitch.
What elements should be considered to earn points?
Perhaps rarity/ likelihood of finding the bird x distance/time traveled
with some points for available transport/ ease of access/adversity and
what else? Should swimming earn more points than walking? How many
bonus points should one earn for beating prohibited access etc?
Regards
Ian May
I have recently changed my primary email address (see above)
PO Box 110
St Helens Tasmania
land line (03) 63761966
VoIP OzEnetphone (03) 63121123
Telstra Mobile 0428337956
St Helens Tasmania
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