Greenish birding

The Biking Birder (BB) recently published a post about a Green Big day event promoted by some folk in the USA.  It seemed like a bit of fun so I passed the links along to the COG chatline.  Before getting to my own contribution to the event it is interesting to review a couple of messages I got back.

Both messages are from people I respect and both raise interesting philosophical issues.

1. The first response was from a friend who has been accused of being a lawyer.  He noted that the original post was a Green Big Day while BB referred to a Big Green Day.  My response was that this was a cultural issue with “Big Day” being a North American concept while BB is heavily into promoting Green-ness.  Whatever: it seemed like a good idea.
2. Secondly another friend said how he wasn’t into competitive events of this nature.   My own thoughts are that such events are a good focus for introspection (when and why burn carbon?) and also get one to really pay attention to the birds around.  Plus if one gets the juices flowing, that isn’t bad!

The rules of the event appeared pretty simple but as always the devil was in the detail.  I decided that I would record the birds I saw each of the 4 days left in the event up to the point when I fired up an internal combustion engine.  I would include in this post the results from each day and the total of species seen over the four days, but only submit the best (ie BIGgest) day to the Green Big Day site.  There was supposed to be a team of 2+, but buggah it, I’ll do it with Frances and the small dog and tell the organisers Elvis was with me.  Let them prove he wasn’t!

Incidentally, when I lived in the ACT I tried to score, greenly, 100 birds in a day within the ACT.  I got over 90 a few times but never managed the biggie.  Of course I tended to do these tricks in mid‑Spring when everything is around and noisy rather than late Autumn!  However the Northern Hemisphere folks time their events to suit themselves.

Here are some comments on the days:

1. Day 1: Finished about 3pm when I fired up my petrol lawnmower to mulch some heavy duty weeding.  I had recorded 27 species from prowling round our block and a 2.1km walk along a road from the block.
2. Day 2: Finished about 11:20am when we drove off to Queanbeyan for various duties.   18 species on prowls around our own block.
3. Day 3:  Finished about 11:30am when I had to drive our car to pick up some horse poop for the garden.  28 species for the day, including a huge mixed flock with Speckled Warbler a highlight.  Total species over 3 days is 40!  The carbon freeness of my event was completely stuffed when an Osprey (first for the ACT) was sighted about 50km away with darkness approaching.  Dipped on it as well as blowing my green credentials!
4. Day 4: There is no finish line.  Well, no petrol was burnt today but some alcohol was oxidised about 5pm which I felt dropped the shutters on the day.  I actually got out on the treadlie today but underestimated how long I needed to do a route so it got a bit shortened, probably knocking about 5 species off the list.  On the ride (33km) I wrote down 19 species of which 8 were addition to the event list.  The total for the day was 43 species and for the event as a whole 53 species.  The best bird of the day was a covey of 3 Brown Quail pointed  by the small dog and flushed by me entering the Joycea jungle.