Hi !
What is the Task ?
The Task is impossible but in the words of Sir Francis Bacon its "better to travel hopefully than ever to arrive". The Task has been going for over 3 years and counting and all my predictions are proving right.
The aim is to try and post a picture (I have taken) and some words about every bird species in the world. There are over 10,300 birds on the IOC list of world birds that I am working from. I decided a long time ago that I would try and see as many as I can before I shuffle off. I have not actually tallied up how many I have to go as the "ticks" are spread across a number of digital copies of the list, old notebooks and guides. I doubt that I have seen more than a thousand bird species as yet and I certainly never have enough images to last more than a month or so in advance. I felt like I needed something to hold my birding together - to make it a bit less aimless than just the world list. Moments get forgotten and notebooks get lost.
Above : A favourite walk in Sri Lanka in the hills near Kandy with the family and Ben the labrador - the family pet of the owners of Ellertons. There are birds you've never seen just down this track !
My Idea
My original idea was to post a picture of a bird here taken by me every day. At the beginning I worked out it would take 27 years for me to complete the journey - until my 70 th birthday. At the present pace I am not going to finish the Task in this lifetime so perhaps I will swap to Bhudism. I really do not expect that I will succeed in posting a picture of every bird in the world but it will be fun trying. I will need to get out there and get a few hundred images of birds under my belt just to keep up ! There was a long period when I never took pictures of birds. On that basis I am going to have retrace my steps and to find old friends as we go along.
Above : I often have company when I am birding - a not very fruitful trip to Wadi Waraya - a beautiful place though.
Rules ?
I am reserving the right to use pictures by someone standing next to me - we are very much now a safari family and there will be times when my wife has the shot as she is on the right side of the car. I also reserve the right to tell you what a blob or blur is ! I can't promise to post a picture that actually looks like every bird I have seen.
Those are the only rules - I am basically upgrading a birders "tick" with photo evidence. I cannot gurantee a bird a day and I am sure there will be flurries and then periods of innactivity.
I am not in competition with anyone and I am certainly not setting out to do anything special. This will be the birding equivalent of slow cooking. I do read those books where 1000's of ticks are picked up in a year. In the end while it must be fun they do descend into shopping lists. Hopefully with at least a day or more for each bird I can take the time to tell you about the place and moment.
Like this - taken in a children's maze in a Dubai Park ! Its a Corncrake - try and see one of these in a Hay field in the Hebrides and you will understand why a view like this can reduce a grown man to a quivering heap.
I thought at first that I would give points for the bird and the birding moment. A bit like Parker points for wine out of 100. I regretted this after my fourth or fifth post and realised that my feelings are usually wow, nice, a bit indifferent or really not bothered. So I dropped the idea altogether as it did not ring true and edited out the scoring system. You cannot score a bird moment out of 100. All you can do is try and convey what is special about a bird - and trying to see them. Instead I am keeping at present a top 10 going. If I make it to say 5,000 might allow myself a top 50.
I am no ornithologist so any information I tap out will just be a combination of things I have read or seen. Don't expect anything too erudite. Some moments with birds have genuinely moved me. At other times I have wondered what I am doing there and what's for tea.
Coots ? What time is it to go home :
Mostly I am doing this to keep myself attacking the world list. It will keep me travelling and keep me arguing for the component of family holidays that involves the great outdoors. As a result of the Task I am pretty clear that I have now been to Tanzania twice on safari, India and have discovered quite a few hidden corners of the the UAE packed with birds. This is not a birding desert. There is a huge world out there packed with birds - and the places, food, culture, views and verandas that go with it.
A World of Birds
At some point I will have to head down to the Antartic to get a picture of an Emperor penguin. I am going to have to go into the Amazon, head up into the foothills of the Himlayas for rare pheasants and get myself down to some small islands in the South Pacific for rare endemics. I am going to have to get used to Pelargics to find those seabirds or go to where they breed at the right time of year. That has to be reason enough to do this. I am going to have to scout the globe with a camera. I'd better start saving. Travel is good in and of itself and birds give me one more lense to view the world through. I use food and wine and history but always when I travel at some point I will end up next to a marsh or trekking through a national park looking at birds. Birds are woven into family holidays at present but as we get older I can see a little more lattitude for some trips away. I also travel for work - Europe, Middle East, the States which helps.
Exotica - more like it ! Making up for years of coots.
So its a bit of fun and mostly just for me. I have this dream though that I could sit there at 68 and announce on a big birding website that I only have to photograph 500 birds and I will have a complete record of the worlds avifauna. I expect there is someone out there with thousands of images already who could post them up tomorrow if they had the time.
So I will keep this low profile. As things stand people are stumbling across it from time to time and I am getting hits from as far afield as the States, India, UK, Netherlands, Czechoslavakia and Singapore. My Robin is a favourite post. I am proud of that picture. I get about 5000 hits a year and thats the way I like it.
Equipment
I started life with a very simple Panasonic Lumix with a small focus on it. The results on this site up until about post 82 or so will definately show !
Above : Life before Mr Canon
I am now the proud owner of a Canon 550 D, a 100-400 mm zoom lense with all the bells on and I have a X 2 extender kit. The difficulty is that the auto focus will not work with the extender on the zoom. For now life's all good and my photographs have taken a quantum leap of which I am proud. I have added a 60 D camera body and few more lenses along the way. The computer has been upgraded to a mac book pro and bit by bit the Task has been a good excuse to develop an eco system of gadgetry that keeps me amused. I have even been on a camera course and hopefully pictures will improve over time. The Task is burgeoning its own cottage industry.
Below : Life after Mr Canon - Ooh Ah !
If you like what I am doing please do stop by every so often and leave a comment. I am quite excited really as I think I have found something genuinely motivational that takes me a bit beyond my life list on its own and should provide me in years to come with a nice record of my "birding life".
Retirement ?
This is also an investment in my retirement. If I am lucky enough to get clean away at some point between 55 and 60 - here's hoping - I started The Task at 42 and 20 years into effectively the same job. By the time I am 55 I should have a couple of thousand birds under my belt with some clear (and probably quite taxing !) targets and having been to a dozen countries to get stuck into the job.
Mostly its about this - the grandeur of it all :
Along the way there is time for other things - being out of doors turns up all sorts ! Below sand gazelle perhaps just 10 miles from house out in the Dubai desert.
This birding life indeed. There are just so many beautiful places and birds to see. I spent a lot of time looking at other people's websites and dreaming about the day when I could head off to find the worlds birds. After moving to Dubai I started to realise that I was really well placed for getting to Africa and Asia and it was time to get on with it rather than waiting for when I am 60.
The best of it - I am convinced that it has galvanised me into travelling further on holiday with the family, camping, safaris, boat trips, treks - I have taken pictures in Canada, Sri Lanka, India, Tanzania the United Kingdom and Oman. I have hardly started.
I am updating this at the beginning of 2015 with a few trips booked and having got stuck in the low 300's. Hopefully 2015 will be a good year for pushing on. 1000 has to be the "medium" term target for the next couple of years. It can only be a few years until I am back in the UK and then I will have a couple of hundred breeding birds to attack there !
I hope you like the concept - I am not being too competitive about it and really its just somewhere to collect some memories - I enjoy coming back and reading myself.
Neil
