ZooChat Big Year 2016

479. Fischer's turaco
480. Blue-mantled crested flycatcher
481. European cuckoo

Mammals
84. Bushy-tailed mongoose

 

482. Cabanis's bunting
483. Black-bellied starling

Mammals
85. Mountain dwarf galago
86. African palm civet

In Costa Rica, Arjan Dwarshuis has just broken the big year record and he has now seen 6132 bird species (following IOC), his goal is to reach the 7000 species mark by the end of the year...

 

484. Crowned eagle
485. Little sparrowhawk
486. Yellowbill
487. African golden oriole
488. Usambara thrush
489. Mountain greenbul
490. Purple-banded sunbird
491. Green-backed cameroptera

I have seen the Usambara thrush last year, but the East Africa field guide is rather outdated and regards it as a subspecies, but it is actually quite accepted as a full species.

 

Birds
102. Red Knot
103. Curlew Sandpiper



Hix

 

I braved the cold and the snow (it's barely November and snowing already!) to go out birding today and managed to add a few species to the year-list:

597) Lesser-spotted Woodpecker
598) Brambling
599) Merlin

So close to 600...

And also a mammal:

68) Wild Boar

 

One more at last (12/11/2016):
101. Tawny Owl

It has already snowed here, albeit very pathetically with none settling.

 

Maybe I'm just used to the amount of snow I got in Saudi Arabia then .
Though it was snowing quite heavily for a couple of days this week (on Tuesday it snowed solidly for pretty much the whole day) and quite a bit has settled. A snowy forest is very pretty though.

 

Birds
104. Bar-tailed Godwit
105. Little Curlew

Fish
297. Harlequin Rockcod



Hix

 

A trip to Insel-Hombroich in Germany got me a few more:

Birds
130) Red kite, Milvus milvus
131) Long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus

Mammals
23) Coypu, Myocastor coypus

 

492. Grey-headed sparrow

87. Angolan fruit bat

 

14/11/2016
323. little eagle
324. superb parrot

 

493. Grey olive greenbul
494. Olive ibis

Olive ibises are extremely difficult birds to observe and additionally they are also very rare in East Africa, they are easiest to see when they fly to their roosts at dusk and apparently they sometimes fly over my rest house where I have slept for about 5.5 weeks in total until now. But off course I hadn't heard, let alone seen, them... Well until this evening when I was working on my laptop and I heard very loud ibis calls approaching and when I looked out of my window I saw 2 ibises flying over very fast. I am hoping to get better views in the coming weeks, but that might not happen....

 

Derbyshire birder Mark Pass has also smashed the uk year list record and reached a milestone by seeing a kildeer on Shetland, his 400th species in Britain this year (excluding Ireland). With over a month to go he looks set to see more species in the UK this year than I have in the last 25 years

 

348 American Bittern - Botaurus lentiginosus
349 Black Scoter - Melanitta americana
350 Great Black-backed Gull - Larus marinus

 

Figured it was about time I posted this here as well. Managed to pick up quite some new species in Ghana, although obviously not as much as if it would've been a trip focused on birding. The trip being a family trip in combination with me not being a very experienced birder (but a very strict one, after all) didn't result in enormous numbers. Nonetheless, I am quite satisfied with the amount of animals I saw and especially happy with certain rarities!

121. Lesser Striped Swallow (Cecropis abyssinica)
122. Orange-cheeked Waxbill (Estrilda melpoda)
123. Northern Red Bishop (Euplectes franciscanus)
124. Yellow-mantled Widowbird (Euplectes macroura)
125. Oriole Warbler (Hypergerus atriceps)
126. Blue-billed Firefinch (Lagonosticta rubricata)
127. Bar-breasted Firefinch (Lagonosticta rufopicta)
128. Long-tailed Glossy Starling (Lamprotornis caudatus)
129. Yellow-crowned Gonolek (Laniarius barbarus)
130. Southern Fiscal (Lanius collaris)
131. Black-and-white Mannikin (Lonchura bicolor)
132. Bronze Mannikin (Lonchura cucullata)
133. Northern Black Flycatcher (Melaenornis edolioides)
134. African Pied Wagtail (Motacilla aguimp)
135. Pied Crow (Corvus albus)
136. Northern Grey-headed Sparrow (Passer griseus)
137. Village Weaver (Ploceus cucullatus)
138. Tawny-flanked Prinia (Prinia subflava)
139. Common Bulbul (Pycnonotus barbatus)
140. Yellow-fronted Canary (Serinus mozambicus)
141. Black-crowned Tchagra (Tchagra senegala)
142. African Thrush (Turdus pelios)
143. Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu (Uraeginthus bengalus)
144. Pin-tailed Whydah (Vidua macroura)
145. Wilson's Indigobird (Vidua wilsoni)
146. African Yellow White-eye (Zosterops senegalensis)
147. Buff-throated Sunbird (Chalcomitra adelberti)
148. Olive-bellied Sunbird (Cinnyris chloropygius)
149. Beautiful Sunbird (Cinnyris pulchellus)
150. Superb Sunbird (Cinnyris superbus)
151. Splendid Sunbird (Cinnyris coccinigastrus)
152. Little Swift (Apus affinis)
153. African Palm Swift (Cypsiurus parvus)
154. Bearded Barbet (Lybius dubius)
155. Woodland Kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis)
156. Senegal Coucal (Centropus senegalensis)
157. Western Plantain-eater (Crinifer piscator)
158. Green Turaco (Tauraco persa)
159. Laughing Dove (Spilopelia senegalensis)
160. Red-eyed Dove (Streptopelia semitorquata)
161. Rose-ringed Parakeet (Psittacula krameri)
162. Abyssinian Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus)
163. Northern Red-billed Hornbill (Tockus erythrorhynchus)
164. African Pied Hornbill (Tockus fasciatus)
165. African Grey Hornbill (Tockus nasutus)
166. Red-throated Bee-eater (Merops bulocki)
167. Woolly-necked Stork (Ciconia episcopus)
168. Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis)
169. Hadada Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash)
170. Hamerkop (Scopus umbretta)
171. White-faced Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna viduata)
172. African Swamphen (Porphyrio madagascariensis)
173. Helmeted Guineafowl (Numida meleagris)
174. Double-spurred Francolin (Pternistis bicalcaratus)
175. Stone Partridge (Ptilopachus petrosus)
176. Grey Kestrel (Falco ardosiaceus)
177. Palm-nut Vulture (Gypohierax angolensis)
178. Gabar Goshawk (Micronisus gabar)
179. Yellow-billed Kite (Milvus aegyptius)
180. Hooded Vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus)
181. Long-tailed Cormorant (Microcarbo africanus)
182. African Wattled Lapwing (Vanellus senegallus)

17. African Striped Ground Squirrel (Xerus erythropus)
18. Straw-coloured Fruit Bat (Eidolon helvum)
19. Franquet's Epauletted Fruit Bat (Epomops franqueti)
20. Mona Monkey (Cercopithecus mona)
21. Green Monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus)
22. Geoffroy's Black-and-white Colobus (Colobus vellerosus)
23. Patas Monkey (Erythrocebus patas)
24. Olive Baboon (Papio anubis)
25. Waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus)
26. Kob (Kobus kob)
27. Common Warthog (Phacochoerus africanus)
28. Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus)
29. African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana)

Herps will follow soon, possibly along with some birds that still need (confirmed) identification.

 

@ KevinVar - that's a lot of lifers!

And - for anyone who might be planning a trip to Ghana - where did you see them all?

The Rose-ringed Parrots I'm guessing are aviary escapees?




Hix

 

@ Hix,
Basically everything, with the exception of a few species I had already seen this year (great egret, feral pigeon and spotted flycatcher) was a wild lifer for me as it was my first time to Africa. For anyone who is interested, I also keep a spreadsheet with everything I've seen with the date and locations where I saw the species for the first time this year. You can find it here. Pictures will also be uploaded to the gallery in the future.

The Rose-ringed parakeets I saw for the first time in Kumasi, which is outside their natural range according to my guide book, so those could be escapees. However, later I also saw them in Mole National Park in northern Ghana, which is part of their residential range and I am fairly certain these were truly wild animals.

 

Update of the dutch guy which broke the Birding-world-record :
Noah Strycker's Global Big Year Record Has Been Broken

 

Picked up a seasonal addition 10min from home as I was departing for a zoo day today.

344. Bohemian Waxwing - Bombycilla garrulus