When we showed up in Belize last year, we decided to do a “Birding Big Year.” If you are not familiar with the concept, you keep track of the total number of birds you’ve seen for an entire year. We started our Big Year on 1 Dec 2017 (the first day we were in Belize) and concluded it on 30 Nov 2018 (in Thailand). We’ve had a grand time tracking all the birds throughout this year … Some of our running totals are:
1) Belize – 200 birds. So many birds migrate here from the USA … it was cool to see them in their winter setting.
2) USA (Arizona/Texas/Other) — Around 170 species … some were duplicates from Belize. A beautiful array of birds.
3) Canada — We saw around 106 different species in Canada. BC produced some great days of viewing this last summer … I think we saw over 50 species just at our house!
4) Hong Kong … We only saw 11 birds in Hong Kong … but they were nice ones.
5) Vietnam … At first, we didn’t see many birds … they were scarce all over. However, in Cat Tien National Park we saw quite a few to bring our totals up. We saw 103 different birds in Vietnam.
6) Cambodia was a pleasant surprise … We had a couple of outings that brought our total for the country up to 60 birds.
7) Laos … This one was a little slim. We didn’t spend enough time here, but what we did see was nice! We saw 18 birds in Laos.
So as we’ve come to the end of our “Big Year,” our final tally was 514 birds! Whoa. We never even gave that number a thought but it’s been pretty grand. My personal life list was around 400 birds when we started this adventure … I’m now over 800 and well on my way to 1,000. I hope to get there by the end of this Southern Swing.
Enjoy,
Stumblingpiper
Reblogged this on Wolf's Birding and Bonsai Blog.