It has taken us to wonderful places, we have spent time together (at times stressful and at other times restful), we have met interesting people along the way and we are more in tune with the seasons and the world around us. I have birded in the cold, the wind, the heat, the rain, the mist, the dark and on land and out to sea. It has not all been pleasant either, I found the pelagic trips very challenging, I have been bitten by any number of unknown insects and had a bad case of tick-bite fever too.
I have kept detailed records of all my sightings, both birds and mammals, throughout the year as well as recording the distances we travelled to get to all our targeted birds and the days we spent in the field birding. The main purpose of the Big Birding Year was to resee my list and I only missed reseeing 30 birds, I got to 95%!
I worked consistently on the list and birded throughout the year, weekends at home we would pop out to local hotspots here in Gauteng or I planned trips to key destinations around South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. As can be seen in the graph below the numbers ticked up slowly and surely all year and I ended up seeing 657 birds, way beyond my expectations given my starting point of 592.
I learnt about commitment this year in a different kind of way. The singlemindedness of the task at hand required determination to keep going no matter whether I wanted to or not or how I was feeling at the time. I spent 153 days birding or 42% of the year.....
And we certainly did the hours and hours on the road in the trusty Jeep, more than 45000 kilometers on road, in the air and out to sea. Our spring month was a biggie with a trip to Cape Town for a pelagic outing and the West Coast National Park, then to Giants Castle in the Drakensberg with June and Ross for the Bearded Vulure as well as the Karoo trip!
Well its official, we could have circumnavigated the earth, we did over 45000 kilometers for the Big Birding Year!
