Extreme birdwatching

Well Dave has just left to head back to Boston after two weeks of extreme birdwatching and I'll be needing another holiday to recover! With my Australia list standing on an admittedly modest 257 species after four years down here, we managed to rack up 262 species in just two weeks. This included 79 new ones for my list taking it onto a more respectable 336 (if my maths is correct).

Farmland - Hawkesbury river

Forest - Royal NP

Coastline - Norah Head

Wetlands - Pitt Town Lagoon

Now the secret to these figures is primarily planning but also not wasting precious daylight hours with useless things like sleeping, eating and travelling! You must clearly also visit many different habitats and know when to move on when the majority of birds have been seen. I know about the top spots around Sydney but Dave had researched things very nicely for the Queensland leg of the holiday and this led to us seeing over 85% of all the species possible up there. All in all a great success and a lot of fun even if we were up before 6am every day!

Finally time to go home