The Biggest Day. (1 Viewer)

I will probably regret sticking my neck out, but I am intending to break the 24h World Record of birds seen or heard on Sep 27. It was 26 years since John Fanshawe, Terry Stephenson and Andy Roberts set their record of 342 species in Kenya and 30 years since Ted Parker and Scott Robinson set 331 in Cocha Cashu, Manu, Peru without the use of motorized vehicles.

There is a short account written up by Scott Robinson from his and Parker's record here:
but I am curious about the conditions for the Kenya record. Was it a calendar day or perhaps 24h spanning over 2 calendar days?
It would be great to get in contact with any of the record holders for a short account to publish on the blog, so if anyone could pass on their contact details I would appreciate it.

How I am going to do it? Well, Parkers and Robinson non-motorized record will stand as such, because I will use vehicles. Read about the strategy here:
http://the-biggest-day.com/the-biggest-day-master-plan/

The day will be filmed by two Peruvian filmmakers, so there should be a documentary made later about the event.

Please come back to the blog to see how I am doing. I can do with the moral support.

Saludos from Peru
Gunnar :king:

Wish you all the best Gunnar! Wish I was able to help

Gunnar, not sure how many species your "Twitter and Facebook Updates" are going to get you? I suggest you do these at the airport only while in departures?!

good luck, cheers alan

Its going to be a heck of a day of birding! Having spent a fair amount of time where the Biggest Day will take place, I cant wait to see how it goes! Wish I could be there...

What happened to The Biggest Day? :-C

Sorry that it didn't work out this year, Gunnar.

These guys did all right though:
http://perubirdingtours.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/the-biggest-day2.pdf
http://perubirdingtours.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/checklist-big-day-27sep12.pdf

Long-crested Pygmy-Tyrant is not at Tres Chimbadas. In spite that Omar was with me part of the time at Tres Chimbadas and Explorer's Inn - although we were seperated at times, there are 45 species he never mentioned to me on his daylist from these areas while we were together. There were a couple of birds we made play back for that I certainly never heard, Omar never mentioned that he heard that are still on the above list.

An additional 25 species allegedly recorded on the link above we failed to find from Pastora and Cachuela during our recce of that area the previous afternoon with Omar.

In the end of course it comes down to honors system. We can never know for sure if a single observer hears a bird correctly or just put it down because it is usually at the site.

I know how many species I got on my big days.

27 Sep Eco Aventuras, Explorers Inn, Tres Chimbadas, La Pastora, La Cachuela, Huacarpay (Cusco), Poza Arenillas (Lima), Pantanos de Villa (Lima) and Museo Histora Natural (Lima). 265 species

29 Oct. EcoAventura, Saona Lodge, Tambopata road, Triunfo, Pastora, Cachuela - all Puerto Maldonado vicinity. 241 species.

31 Oct. EcoAventura, Saona Lodge, Tambopata road, Pastora, Ventanilla (Lima), Pantanos de Villa (Lima) 294 species.

It was unusually dry and extremely hot in Puerto Maldonado, and the activity died down around 8 AM. From then on a lot of the birds had to be playbacked with pre-recorded songs to get started and many of those took long time to get going. Time contraint made me miss several usually easy ones.

I shall be continuing posting on the blog when I get my notes together. It was fun to do a big day, and I will undoubtedly try to do it again. I am thinking perhaps in January - rainy season. With some luck - one may have a rain free morning before the flight to Lima. With ducks, herons and migrating shorebirds available as well as fine-tuning the itinerary it should possible to do much better.

Saludos

Gunnar

Gunnar, if I read you correctly, this seems to be a very sad situation which spoils it for everyone. As you say, this challenging (but ultimately unimportant) competition relies on the honour and integrity of all participants. But it's obviously easy to claim a record-breaking count, and very difficult for anyone else to disprove. Maybe a single highly improbable/impossible claimed species without good supporting evidence should be enough to completely disqualify a world record total...

Richard, many of the new Peruvian bird guides are very good with great field identification skills, but there is traditionally no birding community as such in Peru. Only recently through Facebook have people interested in birds started communicating with each other. Hopefully, this can be a seed to some sort of birding association in Peru. Without a birding tradition of a century as in many northern hemisphere countries, it is easy to understand that in Peru perhaps the integrity is not the same.

As you imply, it is not as easy to just subtract an obvious mistake in the total list and say, the record was broken anyway. Who would know?