Updates on a couple of projects

Bird a Day

The first is that I am up and running in the official BirdaDay competition for 2015.  There seem to be many more Australians having a go this year and fewer North Americans.  Several Tanzanian birders are also involved and with their diversity of species and habitats they should have a good chance.

Thus far my average response code is 61 and BAD code is 3.51.  For comparison the game I started in July last year, which by this point was biased towards birds in Northern and Western NSW, rated as 52 and 3.05 respectively.

So the birds this year reflect those seen slightly more often by eBirders (higher response code) but are slightly more unusual where I have been seeing them (effectively, close to home).  The best birds are either
Australian Owlet-nightjar                       
or Plumed Whistling-Duck
or Powerful Owl

NSW towns

By the end of January 2015 we had visited 211 towns of which we had personally added 36 to my population list.  The places we have been are shown by the blue icons in the following image.

I have also shown the major areas we haven't yet been with red marks.  
  • The little red dot on the South Coast is going to get visited in the near future and will probably mark off about 7 towns and perhaps add a couple.  (It will also ensure 3 pretty reasonable birds get added to the above project.)
  • The cross hatched area is huge but probably only contains about a dozen towns.  We'll get a few of them on our way to Adelaide in Autumn.
  • The blob just North of Sydney is the Central Coast.  There are a lot of towns in that area and we might make a first foray there this year.
  • The two bigger circles are Southern New England and the Lower North Coast.  They will get some action when we plan a long trip to avoid the cold.

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