ZooChat Big Year 2020

Personally 2020 has been my best wildlife year ever - the pandemic has allowed me to spend more time in nature looking for wildlife, and this fall my area is getting a superflight of all sorts of boreal bird species.

 

While for me, I did even less trips to natural areas than in last years (severals yeas ago I did almost every weekend except in winter), so it means much less wildlife sighting.

 

2020's actually ended up being more or less bang average for me in terms of British vertebrates just by the totals; a few odd gaps but compensated for by a good run of vagrants. It's definitely lower on inverts though (summer slots when I'd go looking for them were filled with trips I couldn't make during lockdown - both birding and zooing).

It's obviously not been a great year for overseas wildlifing - managed one three-day trip that also had to function as a zoo trip - but through careful choice of destination I still managed two mammal lifers in those three days so can't complain too much!

 

Birds
255. Lapland Longspur Calcarius lapponicus

 

Seen about a week ago while birding. Again, no luck with new bird species.
Reptiles
6. Checkered Keelback Fowlea piscator

 

I didn't put much effort in this thread this year (2021 will hopefully be much better) and there are probably some species I forgot to put in the checklists.
I wanted to do this last addition to my bird list, though, because it was indeed a nice observation (made from my terrace) of a specie that although is really common, always eluded me (or made itself see in a horrible way).

Birds

38. Common Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus


Also, @Kakapo I think Homo sapiens doesn't count.

 

Modern taxonomists excluded us from animal kingdom? (that kind of nonsensic things is what modern taxonomy tend to do...) That would be the only reason I think that can validate your tought...

 

No, it's because obviously everyone of us will see a human in their life, si it's useless to add them in the checklist because it's implicit you have seen them (another person did that before in the thread).

 

It seems I just misunderstood the meaning of the paragraph regarding it in the rules post. I tought it actually encourages to include humans, but after checking the meaning of "bother", it's the contrary way.
A bit weird rule for me, but a rule anyway... ok, tick off human from my list.
It's too late to edit my own post so some admin can do it.

 

Also this thread is a list of animals seen in the wild. Where in the wild did you see a human being? Most humans live in association with other domestic animals which we do not count in this thread.

Actually I came close to seeing a "wild" human this year. I was looking for gliders with a friend in the hills north of here. I went to the loo and while there my friend saw a person who came out of the forest on one track then went back in up another. They were obviously living rough and were barefooted as was evidenced by the track we found later of a bare foot. Come to think of it though the other condition of this thread is that they belong to a breeding population, and are not an accidental escape. I very much doubt the person my friend observed was part of a breeding population.

 

Though they would presumably come under the rule of allowing vagrants from breeding populations. Unless they'd escaped from a prison, of course..!

 

A couple of nice observations, neither new species but worth mentioning.

• We are having a bit of work done at home, leading to a pile of dirt in the work area. A couple of weeks ago I found a dead spotted pardalote on the ground nearby, which was disappointing. However today I noticed a bird fly into then out of a hole in the dirt pile, so obviously they are nesting there. This will obviously delay the removal of said pile.
• On the Moonlit wetland, a pair of Australasian grebes have produced three chicks. Interestingly I have not seen their nest, normally this is quite obvious floating in the middle of the wetland.

 

Obviously I never in my whole life saw an human that is NOT in the wild. And none zoochatter saw one, too. I started considering that maybe people in jail are "not in the wild" (anyway I never visited a jail so I never saw a captive person), but this would be wrong, as they're enclosed by our same species. If we see, for example, the tip of the bill of a hornbill inside the nest, we count it as wildlife even when it's fully enclosed, because its own species is who enclosed it.
For considerating the existence of "non-wild" humans, they must be enclosed by a different species, like aliens. So while advanced-technology aliens that invade Earth aren't discovered, all humans of the world are in the wild.

 

I guess it depends what you call “the wild’.

 

Loons are always good birds to see! This completes my set of the three regular Belgian loons this year.

BIRDS:
291) Common loon, Gavia immer

It also puts me in a position where I'm within 7 species (on my personal lists I do count heard species, so I have 293 there) of getting the 300, a decently good milestone for in Northern Europe, so it makes me more inclined to make a push for that... Let's hope for a few more actual goodies, but there's also plenty of scarcities I've been missing like Whooper swan, Horned grebe, Greater scaup, Rough-legged buzzard, Penduline tit, Crested lark, Common redpoll and Snow bunting that should all be possible! There seems to be an invasion of Iceland gulls underway in the neighbouring countries as well...

 

Good luck!

 

I visited Brisbane’s largest wetlands today – Boondall Wetlands. The only goal of this visit was to tick off Torresian Kingfisher as I have been having a great year with kingfishers so far. It turns out they are everywhere and five minutes into the track I had already spotted a pair perched near the mangroves and another one in flight! This makes it my fifth wild kingfisher species for 2020 (Laughing Kookaburra, Sacred, Forest, Azure and Torresian). From the bird hide, I also saw a darkish blob lurking in the mangroves and after I got my binoculars, I realised it was a Striated Heron – another lifer. I also saw a pair of Tawny Frogmouths up close which was also nice.

Birds
123. Torresian Kingfisher Todiramphus sordidus
124. Striated Heron Butorides striata
125. Pied Oystercatcher Haematopus longirostris

Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) by WhistlingKite24 posted 7 Dec 2020 at 1:56 PM

 

Wow! Managed to fit in one day of free time during some of the busiest weeks of the year for a bit of a trip in the Netherlands. Was originally just going to be Utrecht for a black-throated thrush, but after I still hadn't seen it after half a day of searching I decided I didn't want to come home empty-handed, so I took a detour and chased 2 rare pipits instead. Unlike what I was expecting, both actually showed (and called) very well almost immediately after arrival! This means I've completed the Benelux set of pipits, at least until a pechora or buff-bellied shows up, which interestingly enough has never happened. As it turns out, coincidentally I've also seen all those pipits in 2020!

BIRDS:
292) Red-throated pipit, Anthus cervinus
293) Snow bunting, Plectrophenax nivalis
294) Blyth's pipit, Anthus godlewskii

(Benelux: 289)

 

I visited another local wetlands today. Highlights included lots of fiddler crabs (which I will try and get identified to species level when I update invertebrates) and a nice pair of Brahminy Kites that patrolled the mangroves. Grey Kangaroos were also common along the walking trails. An assortment of fairywrens, fantails, bee-eaters, yellow-faced honeyeaters and kingfishers were also seen along with one surprising lifer.

Birds
126. Grey Shrikethrush Colluricincla harmonica