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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

2017 Western Palearctic Big Year (3 Viewers)

Maffong said:
Today they only added three very easy species that they could've found almost every else too, so must have been a slow day
Whimbrel, Sanderling, Spoonbill

Maffong
Click to expand...

Yes and they neither wrote a blog post nor a facebook update yesterday. Hopefully it was just a long run-up for a really Big Day today...
 
Yellow Wagtail added today which presumably is 157 on the basis that Ruppell's Weaver will be added once computer issues are addressed:-

http://www.bigyearwp.com/index.php/igoterra-ticks/

I confess that I remain interested in the Ruppell's Weaver sighting not only to reconcile the numbers but because firstly it is a tick and secondly, I had only previously known as Green Island as a site so I'd be keen to know if it is elsewhere.

Maffong - looking forward to properly looking at your classification but instinctively I struggle in not differentiating between single location/difficult species and those where they are multi-location or relatively easy within regions. For instance classifying Cape Verde Sparrow and Raso Lark the same. But I do hope to have a proper look at a cracking piece of work.

All the best
 
Paul Chapman said:
Yellow Wagtail added today which presumably is 157 on the basis that Ruppell's Weaver will be added once computer issues are addressed:-

http://www.bigyearwp.com/index.php/igoterra-ticks/ ...
All the best
Click to expand...

Quite slow progress in the last days - and just easy and widespread species added. Probably the pessimistic people in this thread are right that they stayed already too long in Kuwait in winter? And they still have five days to go there...
 
DanielDoer said:
Quite slow progress in the last days - and just easy and widespread species added. Probably the pessimistic people in this thread are right that they stayed already too long in Kuwait in winter? And they still have five days to go there...
Click to expand...

One or two very significant rarities would change that. Everything is possible and they are continuing to work hard eg back to the farms in the south today near the Saudi Arabian border.

All the best
 
Captain_of_Crunch said:
Where were the Tawny Eagle and Common Yellowthroat seen? I can't find any info on the latter.
Click to expand...

I found the information on the Yellowthroat on the Birding Azores Facebook site

The Tawny Eagle was already pointed out.

@Paul: Of course there is no perfect way to code all the 1001 bird species, same as with species delimitations. But that's why I also included your 'gettability' codes in column C. Where do you draw the line for a single location? A country, an archipelago, a single island? However I have already been thinking about another column, indicating if a species is on the higher or the lower end of a category.

I'm looking forward to your critique!

Maffong
 
I guess that the nature of the beast is that there will be more longuers in a W P Big Year than we've become accustomed to after following Arjan's global version. Their's has, perhaps, only come earlier than expected ... Four or five 'dead' days won't be the significant blow that it would have been on a broader canvas although I'm sure that come December those with 20/20 hindsight will remind us of that they should have done! At least they'll be a lot warmer there than those of us in the UK and much of Europe!
 
Good choice. As we have expected they will run out of species sooner or later.

Especially as they will have time to pick up residents in the 2nd Kuwait trip, maybe even a week would have been enough?

I guess they did really well to pick up some rarities and go to species in Kuwait but Iam happy to see they are going for the twitches :).
 
Seems a good move, and shows they mean business. Let's just hope they don't blow their entire budget buying same-day rail tickets in the UK!
 
Hopefully they'll be in touch with some British birders that can give them a hand and help with logistics. They've got some miles to cover and a few targets to pick up.

All the best
 
Swallows and Martins says diluta (as a subspecies of Sand Martin) has been recorded in Egypt and Syria (and also Bermuda and Arctic America!). Have those WP occurrences been reviewed since diluta was raised to a species? Or have I got this totally wrong?
 
Sam Bryo said:
Swallows and Martins says diluta (as a subspecies of Sand Martin) has been recorded in Egypt and Syria (and also Bermuda and Arctic America!). Have those WP occurrences been reviewed since diluta was raised to a species? Or have I got this totally wrong?
Click to expand...

Yes they were errors in identification apparently see link and attached.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...iew_of_the_species'_status_in_the_Middle_East

I don't know what identification features that it is felt that this bird shows which suggest Pale Sand Martin? Have they said?

All the best

Paul
 

Attachments

  • Kirwan_Grieve_Sandgrouse35-2_2013.pdf
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Last edited:
Paul Chapman said:
...

I don't know what identification features that it is felt that this bird shows which suggest Pale Sand Martin? Have they said?

All the best

Paul
Click to expand...

No, in the facebook post they just wrote that the Martin they observed at the Jahra Pool Reserve was rejected as an aberrant Sand Martin and that they now suspect Pale Sand Martin. Probably they didn't want the people to be biased that they asked for their opinion...
 

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