ZooChat Big Year 2021

I forgot to mention, I finally hit my secondary bird goal of 100. At the beginning of the year, I thought I would be hard pressed to find 80, but with perseverance and some luck I managed. I hope to get out more frequently and more often to more locations next year, and as this was my first year I am excited by what new lifers I can find. Well, this year is not over yet, lets see how many more species I can find.

 

12/7/21

Birds:

58. Tufted Titmouse
59. Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
60. White-Breasted Nuthatch

 

A much unexpected sighting out my front window yesterday, a Golden Eagle soaring by and trying to dodge assaults by a raven!

Birds:

115. Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)

12-115-7-2-1-33

 

Couple of confirmed IDs from the Southwest:

Birds
156. Mexican Duck (Anas diazi)

Mammals
22. Western Harvest Mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis)

and a few eastern species picked up in the last week:

Birds
157. Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus)
158. White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)
159. Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla)
160. Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza georgiana)
161. Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus)
162. Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus)

Mammals
23. White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

 

Rieselfelder Münster, Münster

Went to see the Long-billed Dowitcher that was around the last two days, but of course it was gone today. Got the goose instead, but only for a couple seconds as right when I found it in the gaggle of Greather White-fronteds and Greylags some lady's dog decided to chase them all off. I guess we don't do leashes anymore in nature conservation areas...

Birds
70. Lesser White-fronted Goose (Anser erythropus)

 

Quite likely my final 2021 addition came courtesy of two female birds at Langford Lowfields - the first time I've seen females of this species in the wild. They've been hanging around for a while and my one chance to go look was nearly scuppered by fog but it lifted just enough for the mission to be accomplished.

Birds:
207. Ring-necked Duck - Aythya collaris

 

12/22/21

Birds:

61. Black Vulture

 

A late but expected entry:

Mammals
24. House Mouse (Mus musculus)

Edit: forgot another species I saw a while back and confirmed the ID for:

25. Hispid Cotton Rat (Sigmodon hispidus)

 

It’s getting towards that time of year so I thought I’d be first to jump in with an end of year roundup. Overall, this year I identified 414 species, although my total here is a couple less. COVID of course continued to cast a shadow and again no international trips were possible. For a time, I thought I might be able to get to New Zealand but that soon changed. I did have a great trip to the Australian tropics in far-north Queensland in February and another to the Great Barrier Reef in May. I was lucky with both of these as had they been scheduled for a couple of weeks later borders would have shut due to a local COVID outbreak. Planned trips to the Northern Territory and Western Australia had to be abandoned and even travelling around my own State was very difficult for much of the year.

Professionally things were also difficult with the continual lockdowns. One bright spot is the Orange-bellied Parrot program. We conducted our second local release in May. I believe we are the first private organization in Australia to ever stage a reintroduction release of endangered animals. We passed the 300 mark of birds bred at Moonlit, of which 150 have so far been released. Even better, there were 70 wild birds at census date this year, up 400% from the 17 that were in the wild only five years ago.

I enjoy our local wildlife but for this it is getting a bit boring recording the same old things time and time again. So, with international travel opening up again I’ve set myself an objective, more than 1000 new bird species and 100 new mammal species over the next two years (plus whatever ectotherms I see). I’ll be keeping a tally on my posts. This is a substantial number for me as currently I am at 829 bird species and 156 mammal species on my list. This will of course involve travel and three trips to three different continents are in the advanced planning stage. No hint as to where and when until they occur. I don’t want to jinx it.

It is unlikely I’ll be going overseas before the middle of next year, so I’m setting myself an interim target, to have seen half the Australian bird list (excluding vagrants) by the middle of 2022. Of course, taxonomy changes however I’m taking there to be 733 Australian bird species. I’m already at 347, so that means only 20 more. That should be achievable.

I’ve added some more animals to this year’s list below. This is likely to be the last update. Of course, if some unknown insect does bite me in the next week, I’ll be sure to add it. In the meantime, please accept my very best wishes to everyone for a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic New Year!

Birds
212. Striated pardalote Pardalotus striatus
213. Dusky woodswallow Artamus cyanopterus

Invertebrates
(Gisborne Cockroach should have been 95)
96. Banded sugar ant Camponotus consobrinus
97. sp. click beetle Conoderus basalis (new Family)
98. Bush cockroach Ellipsidion humerale
99. sp. robber fly Cerdistus rusticanoides
100. Small pointed snail Cochlicella barbara (new Family)

I thought i'd add a photo of the robber fly enjoying it's Christmas lunch.

 

Thank you so much for what you do with the OBPs. Because of the time, effort, care and passion you are putting into breeding and releasing them, there’s a chance that, one day, I’ll get to see one in the wild.

 

Herptiles:

15. River Cooter (Pseudemys cocinna)

Mammals: 12
Birds: 115
Herptiles: 15
Fish: 4
Invertebrates: 34
Total: 178

 

Mammals:

13. Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger)

Mammals: 13
Birds: 115
Herptiles: 15
Fish: 4
Invertebrates: 34
Total: 179

 

Saelhuysen, Rheurdt

Birds
71. Tundra Bean Goose (Anser (fabalis) rossicus)

 

Birds
53. Indian Robin Copsychus fulicatus

From last week, I had forgotten to post it. On Monday I am finally getting to go out of town for a proper wildlife watching trip, so hopefully I will be able to add more mammals the list soon.

 

Welp, I was meant to get this update posted around October, but I kinda forgot to write a prose, and it's been far too long, so I'll replace it with an update for a trip to Mangere that I took nearly a week back. (Nothing really happened with the first update anyways, just got unsatisfactory viewing of grey gerygone which I'm still trying to get a better sighting of).
So off to Mangere I headed taking the bus, with newfound confidence finally having usable data as to check the bus timetables. Which 'stopped working', whilst I was on Tik Tok at a bus station, thinking nothing of it as the location tracking on the AT app was still functioning I carried on, (this comes to bite me in the ass later on). Arriving in Mangere, I realised I had entirely scuffed up the tide time schedule, (having been checking East Auckland tides, instead of Mangere tides), resulting in me having to squint at the distant blurs of colour that just so happened to be birdlike, although I feel like having binocs would've been a major help, so I guess I'll try and scrounge myself up a pair, before I try birding here again. I think I may have seen a grey teal, but even if it was I'd rather not count such a poor viewing. So I quickly scurried on to the lagoon, which happened to be crudely fenced off, so after scrabbling up and down some rocks managed to get on the walkway. Although it was low tide, so I was just trying to make my way down to the waterworks as fast as possible, but I seemed to have to disturbed the flocks of pied stilts there, or maybe it was the gulls not really sure. What I did see however, was maybe around 4 to 5 of them circling me, actually flying really close to me, enabling fantastic views and even a decent picture!(Impressive considering the fact that all I have is a shoddy iPhone 6 camera which seems to never be able to focus on any moving lifeform more than a metre away). I hope I wasn't disturbing them whilst they were nesting, but from my perspective, I had an hour here until the sun set, so I was making sure I at least had something to add on my year count. Arriving at the waterworks, I could barely see any of the birds, which makes me really wish I had binocs, and the only birds I got good viewings on were flocks of mallards/grey duck hybrids (saw no green heads, but did see orange feet), the occasional welcome swallow and the black swans. Which I was hesitant to put on my list, but after some consideration on that it wouldn't be any different from seeing them in a park in their homeland of Aus, and after seeing a pair of cygnets, I'm placing them on my list. I also saw what were possibly shovelers, probably a dabchick and maybe a scaup, viewings which I was entirely dissatisfied of so I exclude them from my list. After leaving the waterworks and finally realising that my phone had no more data (apparently 5 minutes of Tik Tok makes 20 dollars go down the drain!!!), terrified of being stranded in a location far from home at night, I flagged down a passing car asking to use their hotspot as to find an AT route home. Shockinglly they were ok with it! And super friendly during the entire thing! An hour during my route home although, my bus dropped me off just in a highway and shoddy signage led me to believe there was no more buses going my way. Leading me to walk 2 hours home during the night, as I watched not one but TWO! Of the buses I needed to catch speed pass me.
Was me going here worth it, considering how poor the majority of the sightings I had were and the painful trek I took home at the end ? No, absolutely not. But at least I got two lifers from it and I was planning on putting an update to this thread one way or another, so at least I have that.


Birds
32. Grey Gerygone (Gerygone igata)
33. European Greenfinch (Chloris chloris)
34. Pied Stilt (Himantopus leucocephalus)
35. Black Swan (Cygnus atratus)

Invertebrates
12. Bronze Hopper (Helpis minitabunda)

(I really hope I don't end this year with only 35 birds, but that's probably how it'll pan out, but considering how I surpassed my original granted very pessimistic goal and 7 lifers I'd say this year was still quite good, especially being my first foray into birding and all).

(Stilt photo to be added).

 

Herptiles:

16. Florida Softshell Turtle (Apalone ferox)

Mammals: 13
Birds: 115
Herptiles: 16
Fish: 4
Invertebrates: 34
Total: 180

 

204 oriental turtel dove (Streptopelia orientalis)
twich from early decmeber. semse to look rigth for the mena subspecies.
i got a biger update from a trip i took in oktober but i still need to id a mammal for that

 

I think uniquely in all the years I've done this, this year I have a Christmas Day addition..!

Walking up to my parents' house this morning I was forced to rescue a frog that was out in the middle of the Tarmac. I actually thought it was dead at first but closer inspection revealed it was apparently perfectly healthy but extremely lethargic (unsurprisingly). I was able to dampen my hands from my water bottle and move him a few metres to under a bush where there was some leaf litter to hunker down in - I suspect he had been dragged unwilling into the open by some passing dog/cat/fox/child that then lost interest.

It's a species that I actually find quite hard to find locally and my best chances the last few years have been scuppered by weather or lockdowns so, a little bizarrely, this is my first since 2019.

Amphibians:
5. Common Frog - Rana temporaria

 

Herptiles:

17. Cuban Tree Frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis)

Mammals: 13
Birds: 115
Herptiles: 17
Fish: 4
Invertebrates: 34
Total: 181

 

Birds:

116. Wood Stork (Mycteria americana)

Mammals: 13
Birds: 116
Herptiles: 17
Fish: 4
Invertebrates: 34
Total: 182