A birder's quest to see 10k species
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A birder's quest to see 10k species
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Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#2A great story about an extremely impressive undertaking. For those wanting more about obsessive birding there's Mark Obmascik's non-fiction book "The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession". [0] The book was made into a charming movie "The Big Year" in 2011 which starred Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson. [1][2]
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Big-Year-Tale-Nature-Obsession/dp/145...
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053810/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCBAP2wId5M&ab_channel=Rotte...
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#3A different birder and artist has a great quest to draw ten thousand birds. Amazing artist too: https://www.drawingtenthousandbirds.com/
Just under nine thousand to go. It really is a life long quest.
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#4We are told to be more ecological. Meanwhile what is the carbon footprint of that guy.
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#5I have seen about 180. Nothing to brag about but it has taken me about 10 years. I have not been obsessive about it but has been a leisure activity many weekends. I have done it around the area I have been, but not travelled further than maybe 2, max 3 hours for the point of it.
It is a nice hobby, sharpens your senses and it is fulfilling to observe nature. Compare for example with Pokemon Go, I find it infinitely more rewarding to "hunt" something real.
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#6We are told to be more ecological. Meanwhile what is the carbon footprint of that guy.
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Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#7I have seen about 180. Nothing to brag about but it has taken me about 10 years. I have not been obsessive about it but has been a leisure activity many weekends. I have done it around the area I have been, but not travelled further than maybe 2, max 3 hours for the point of it. It is a nice hobby, sharpens your senses and it is fulfilling to observe nature. Compare for example with Pokemon Go, I find it infinitely m…
I'm not an exclusive bird observer. I make observations of 'moving' organisms from mammals to invertebrates, recording my observations on iNaturalist [1], which is a pretty good way for me to track what I've seen.
[1] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_i...
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#8I've been a casual birder for a couple years now. I've been hearing about the Merlin app for a while, but never installed it until this past week. It has profoundly changed my experience of looking for birds.
If you're unfamiliar with the app, you can start recording on your phone and it will tell you in real time which birds are singing nearby. I haven't used it for positive identifications, just for knowing which birds are nearby. I've had numerous experiences already where a species I had no idea about was nearby, then a few minutes of looking confirmed the species it had identified. If you're a birder and you haven't tried Merlin, I highly encourage you to give it a try. It has also opened my eyes to a few species that spend almost all their time in the canopy and in heavy brush, which are really hard to spot unless you know they're around, and make time to look for them in those areas.
Using the Merlin app has also led to interesting conversations with people about how ML models work. People assume there's a bank of recordings that the app is constantly comparing your live recording against, which I don't believe is the case. The "bird packs" you have to download do contain a bunch of sound files, but those are available so you can play songs for birds you're interested in. I don't believe the identification algorithm is actively using those recordings.
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#9I'm shocked that there are only about 10k species of birds. I had expected there to be more, for some reason.
Re: A birder's quest to see 10k species
#10A great story about an extremely impressive undertaking. For those wanting more about obsessive birding there's Mark Obmascik's non-fiction book "The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession". [0] The book was made into a charming movie "The Big Year" in 2011 which starred Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson. [1][2] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Big-Year-Tale-Nature-Obsession/dp/145... [1] https://www.imd…
I've seen that movie. Very funny.