Back early in 2016, I sent an article to ABA, the American Birding Association trying to promote my BIGBY (Big Green Big Year). I don't think it was ever published by them but I feel that it may fill in any gaps any of you have over reasons to be a Biking Birder.
What do the names Jim
Royer, Scott Robinson, Ted Parker and particularly Dorian Anderson
mean to you? Four Great Americans, pioneers in a relatively new
birding field, Big Green Big Year listing.
Jim Royer back in 2010,
saw 302 bird species in just one county, San Lui Obispo County,
California using no gas
Scott Robinson a
scientist from the Florida Museum of Natural History, together with
Ted Parker, saw 331 bird species whilst doing a Big Green Day back in
1982 in Peru.
Then we come to Dorian
Anderson. In 2014 Dorian didn't just break the North American Birding
Big Green Big Year (BIGBY) record as take it into the stratosphere.
Before 2014 various American birders had seen around the 300 mark
doing a BIGBY. No one could have imagined that Dorian would end up
seeing 618. Phenomenal Green Bird listing, this is also the World
record.
Dorian Anderson, a true American World champion, is the
ultimate Green birder.
In Europe people have
said that I, Gary Prescott, am the most famous Green Birder. Yet I am
not the European BIGBY record holder. I was back in 2010. In that
year I cycled around Great Britain seeing 252 birds whilst raising
money for British bird charities, the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds (RSPB) and The Wildfowl & Wetland Trust
(WWT). I visited every one of both societies nature reserves adding
to the challenge.
Chris Mills of Norfolk
County had held the record until 2010 when he challenged Simon
Woolley of Hampshire County to a Green Year list competition. Chris
won with 251.
Disaster hit my record
number when the British Birds and Rarities Committee took a bird from
my list, deeming that a red-breasted goose was an escaped bird.
Obviously escaped birds don't count and I was therefore back to
parity with Chris on 251.
251 was the European
Big Green Big Year record at the time. What happened next upped the
stakes. Ponc Feliu, a young, handsome Catalonian from Spain saw 304
birds in 2013. So whilst out in Peru for a lot of 2014 I planned my
assault. I must get the record back for Britain.
Back in 2010 I had
visited all of the said nature reserves and also given talks to
schools and colleges, visited cathedrals, museums and ancient
prehistoric sites. I had climbed the five highest peaks and swam in
each of it's oceans and seas. In other words 2010 had been a relaxed
extended exploration of Britain. Things would have to be very
different in 2015 if I was to have a chance of beating Ponc.
I would still visit all
of the RSPB and WWT nature reserves, all 242 of them; after all I
wanted to raise money for these two incredible charities. Away from
that though it would be a year of where is the bird and how can I get
to see it.
The year went well, the
weather was mostly benign, unlike the weather in 2010 when Britain
experienced the two worst winters since the Big Freeze of 1963, and I
ended the year on 289. A massive increase, in relative terms on the
previous 251 but sixteen short on the record held by Ponc. I, The
Biking Birder, would have to do it all again in 2016.
The Biking Birder. I
have been birding since the age of nine but only seriously Green
Birding since 2010 when I first dig a BIGBY. My passion developed
after college when I found out that there were many other people who
loved birds as much as I did. I had a patch near Wolverhampton, UK
and became a High School teacher of biology on a large working class
housing estate. Here I organised a bird watching club which at its
peak had over one hundred members. My thrill at the time wasn't so
much the birds but in seeing children develop their own passion for
nature. Even now after thrity years and more a lot of those children,
now in their forties go birding. Four of us meet up every year on
Shetland to celebrate our mutual love of birds.
So here I am. It is
2016. The route this time doesn't include all of those out of the way
nature reserves. There will be no three weeks spent in Northern
Ireland, no three weeks spent in Wales. I will be cycling along the
south coast, along the east coast and visiting both Shetland and the
magical, remote Fair Isle. This time I will have 305 on my Big Green
Big Year list. I will beat Ponc and regain the European crown.
And I will do all of
this to raise money for charity. Every bird I see will mean more will
go to the four charities; to the RSPB and to the WWT. I am also
supporting Asthma UK. Maybe surprisingly but I suffer from the
condition and have to regularly take my inhalers in order to cycle
every day. Finally, after my time in the Manu Biosphere in Peru I am
supporting the Chaskawasi-Manu Project. Beside the beautiful Madre de
Dios river there is a very small village called Salvacion where a
Spanish organisation is working to give indigenous children a home
from which they can go to school and get an education. The tribal
leaders of the indigenous communities very deep in the Manu, a fully
protected rainforest national park of over a three million acres,
understand the need for a few of their children to be educated in
worldly ways. The hope is that these children will become ambassadors
for their tribes. The Manu is reputed to be have the world's richest
biodiversity yet it is under pressure from the oil industry, mineral
extraction and tree logging.
Green Birding is a way
in which nature lovers, particularly birders can contribute to
negating the challenges presented by Global Warming and Climate
Change. A Big Green Big Year is mentally, spiritually and physically
challenging but what a ride!
The Biking Birder 2016
– The Quest for 300 blog
http://bikingbirder2016.blogspot.co.uk/
Have a fabulous year,
consider Green Birding for yourself and . . . go find it.
Gary, The Biking Birder
Prescott
No comments:
Post a Comment