Update on Bird-a-Day 2015 ...

On 23 May it is looking pretty much as though my participation in the Bird-a-Day challenge for 2015 is about to grind to a halt.  I have 11 birds that I reckon are almost certain to be seen the area around home and a further 12 that are prospects in the urban part of the ACT.  If I can struggle through to 5 June (13 days away) there is a prospect of some coastal birds which might get me through to last years failure date of 11 June.

Comparing the species seen in 2014 with those in 2015 I found that there were 50 species seen last year that I haven't got (so far) this year and 34 this year that I didn't locate last year.  I haven't been able to isolate the reasons for this but was quite surprised to see that several of the species in both lists of "differents" were birds seen on the trips to Adelaide in both years.  This seemed to reflect the different routes followed, with birds such as Major Mitchell's Cockatoo and Yellow Rosella being logged on the trip across the Riverina last year and Little Crow and Chirruping Wedgebill featuring at Broken Hill this year.

This cartoon offers a couple of other reasons for the earlier onset of difficulties.

Of course, as soon as I posted the above I went for a bike ride looping from Queanbeyan, past the airport to Kelly's Swamp and back through Oaks Estate Rd.  In the course of this I found 6 "eligible'" species, including Bird of the Day, Fuscous Honeyeater (code 4, so definitely a bonus).