For about 20 weeks, I’ve been all self-important because my kind brother-in-law invited me into a very exclusive birding challenge. Me?
A committed non-twitcher who doesn’t really have time to devote to such whimsies right now? I said yes without hesitation because, well, I’m a bit competitive.
It’s a WhatsApp group.
It started with about 29 people from vastly different backgrounds – another mom, PhD students who live in the Kruger, a certain famous ex-weatherman, someone in Holland, stats enthusiasts, and so on.
All of us started together on January 1, united in one goal – find seven new birds every week that you haven’t seen yet this year.
That’s one new bird every day. You can’t list the bird a second time in the year.
Also, you have to have actually seen the bird in the week that you submit it.
For example, if you happen to see nine cool birds this week, you can only submit seven of them. To use the other two, you’d have to see them again the following week.
Easy, right?
Doesn’t Oribi Gorge have 250+ bird species listed? That’s at least three-quarters of the year I can stay in this challenge.
Wrong.
The limit of being able to list only seven birds in a week and having no carry-overs makes this a lot harder to do.
Also, January is in South African summer, when there’s an abundance of birds on hand daily. By April or so, those birds have often migrated over to another country.
The group had submitted manually and tried to police themselves with not repeating birds. The integrity has been impressive.
My bird-loving brother-in-law has also committed time to do this admin every week, so he’s keeping things going in spreadsheets and automated bird lists.
Someone also added a stats site so that we can see cool figures, like the number of unique species logged by the group (750+ already).
I like birds. I like stats. I like travellers. I like competing. It’s fun.
But my time is almost up with not being able to travel out to birding sites. I’m too busy at home.
Seeing a fantastic golden-breasted bunting two weeks in a row on our farm would normally have been amazing, but I can only log it once!
How long will I last in the 7 Birds a Week group? Stay tuned.
Still, what a way to spend these last five months. I’ve intentionally looked out of my busy life and noticed what’s out there under my nose – daily. It’s rather beautiful.
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