Hi all,
Seeing Ashwin's email this morning reminded me I forgot to post about my Big
Year in the Newcastle City Council (NSW) area last year. The council area is
quite small at 187 sq km in size and home to just over 156,000 people (with a
density of more than 800 people per sq km).
The boundary of the council area can be seen at the link below.
http://www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/228985/WardBoundariesWeb.pdf
I managed to see 265 species last year within this area. Not bad for such a
densely populated area considered to be the industrial heartland! ;-)
I also heard two others that I could not see, despite having one at my feet
(Lewin's Rail and King Quail). There were others that I saw but could not
identify, being mainly the sightings of Giant-petrels made from shore. Chances
are (these days) they were Northerns but you can't tick on statistics of
course. There were doubtless some Hutton's Shearwaters mixed in with the 1000's
of Flutterings during spring, but none that I could even come close
to confirming.
I used Christidis and Boles because our local club was still using that
taxonomy last year (we now have switched to Birdlife). This was actually
fortuitous because otherwise I would not have been able to include Wandering or
Shy Albatrosses on my list, as my views weren't good enough to say which
species they belong to under the new taxonomy. I did get a good enough image of
at least one Black-browed Albatross to be sure it wasn't a Campbell though.
Anyway, I have a Word doc with a chronological list, a few stats and some
images if anyone is interested. Let me know.
Ironically, I only managed to add 6 birds in the last 2 months of the year
(with one being a 'gimme' that I was leaving in the bank) and in just the first
week since it has ended 3 others have now arrived!
Cheers everyone,
Mick
p.s. to Ashwin, I reckon 450 might be possible in NSW in one year? I've pulled
that straight off the top of my head. I managed 343 in the Hunter alone in
2010, so adding all of the western species, NE rainforests, mallee, south coast
stuff, pelagics out of W'gong etc, surely an extra 100 would be feasible?
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