They appear to be taking it their stride. But what else can you do.
They say they have seen 1004 species, which is an amazing effort in less than 3 months.
To put this in perspective, the Vagrant Twitcher 'record' didn't reach 1000 until August. I have looked at his list and some of the species listed are not accepted in IOC v10.1. I have also tried to follow Ross and Melissa, and although eBird 'only' has them on 984, there are additional species on IOC - my rough IOC list is 994 - so 10 missing.
The only positive I can think of is that they were heading into the 'big rains', which could have made travel very interesting in the next couple of months - I remember struggling to do 30km in 12 hours in Tanzania during the small rains (in a 4x4)
Hi all,
Thanks for the kind words and following along. Yes, more than a bit gutted at the moment that we had to put our trip on hold. We tried to hold off for as long as possible, but most African countries have gone into lockdown and we didn't want to get stuck in some little town for 1,2,3 months!
Hopefully (probably optimistic), once things calm down, we can return in a few months. We still own a truck that's parked in Dar es Salaam so I will at least have to return at some point to drive it back to South Africa to sell. If we can get back by the end of July, I think we could still finish the itinerary except for Gabon/ST&P.
As mentioned, the year list should be at 1004ish. Ebird only has 984 because there's some gaps. I always forget some species here and there and just need to take some time over the next few days to go back and clean up some lists. So 1004 will be Clements. Not sure what IOC is and on top of that we were targeting a lot of ssp that aren't split yet, but surely will be at some point.
I agree, the "big rains" in Tanzania were causing some major issues and had essentially made "remote tanzania" off limits (I almost lost the truck off a cliff driving up to the Uluguru Bushshrike spot!). Right before COVID became an issue we figured we'd leave Tanzania early (move on to Kenya) and then do the remote section later on when we swung back through. But that idea lasted about 2 days and then Kenya shut down their borders!
It was a lot of fun while it lasted. A bit unfortunate that we won't be able to crush the big year record, but I'll still be happy if we can get back to at least clean up most of east Africa.
Will keep everyone updated and between now and then there's still a number of blog posts that need to be posted so keep checking/subscribe to the blog if you're interested!
Best,
Ross