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Thursday 24 March 2011

May Bird Race

The young "Twitchmeister" and probably the county's best young birder aka Gethin Jenkins-Jones is nagging his dad to partake in a bird race which has prompted me to suggest the introduction of a regular bird race in early/mid May when migration is still in full swing and a few winter visitors may still be lingering.
Not exactly sure what format this would take time wise ie 8hrs,12 hrs or 24hrs but the main rule would be to stay within the Glamorgan boundaries,Jake and several others who contribute to this and the GBC and GRC web/blog would certainly have more idea of how a race would be run than I do.
I'm sure with all the competitive birders out there in Glamorgan there should be a fair amount of interest.
Dates suggested are the weekends of 30 April/1 May or 14/15 May (Geth is not available 7/8 May).
All suggestions are welcome and I'm sure we can round up a bit of sponsorship for a prize.

2 comments:

Randal M Snowdrop said...

Essentially Jeff you start at midnight and end 24 hours later. In between you string like f##k in an attempt to see/ hear as many species as possible. If it makes a scrathy call then you've got about 20 ticks in one hit. If it drums on a tree, there's another three, plus Nuthatch. Seawatching from The Worm will get you Puffin and Brunnich's Guillemot, every lamp post in-between there will hold a rare breeding raptor and in the hours of darkness you can tick anything that flits across the road in front of the car. The rules and code of conduct are based on the CBC New Years Day Bird Race. Hope that helps.

Richard G. Smith said...

Actually you do not have to do it Randall's way however appealing that might be to some.
When the county record holders used to do it it was planned with military precision - starting just after midnight at a secret location to get Gropper!
Then its all about tides in the morning and where to go or not to go after that.
By lunchtime you feel like shxt and this lasts for about the next 6 hours - surprisingly little happens birdwise on a nice afternoon in May!! So time for 'bankers'.
Livens up a little in the evening tide has turned Nightjars at 0900hrs if in, Woodcock and bed at last - next day feel like bad jet lag - dont want to go out at all and cannot undertsand why you didn't get Greenfinch!