"Gone Pishing" - National Twitchathon 2016!

Last weekend (October 29/30) was the date of Australia's first National Twitchathon. Previously held as statewide events separate from each other, this year all the states were united to form one national event, and to the delight of the organizers it appears to have been a success!

For those not familiar with the concept of Twitchathon, it is in essence a race - a competition to see which team of crazy birders can see and hear the most species of birds in a 24 hour, 12 hour or 3 hour time period (depending on the race type). In many ways it is the ultimate test of a birders skill - or at least, for those birders not quite crazy enough to attempt a Big Year. It requires a lot of effort in planning a good route, practice ("oiling") runs to make sure the expected species are present at each site, coordination of a team, timing and transport, and of course the fundamental skills in identification of birds by sight and sound.

So why would people - even crazy bird people - go to all that effort? Well, there are a variety of prizes for race winners, and of course it's a lot of fun and a good challenge. But the biggest reason, the whole point of the race, is that it acts as a fundraiser. Competing team members ask their friends, family, workmates etc. to sponsor their team in the race, and those funds are directed to various bird conservation programs. This year for example, teams in New South Wales raised funds to help provide artificial nesting sites and other support for Gould's Petrels and White-faced Storm Petrels on storm-ravaged Cabbage Tree Island; Queensland team's money went towards removing invasive Rubber Vines and feral pigs to help Capricorn Yellow Chats, and so on.

I'd never attempted Twitchathon before. Mostly because I never considered myself a good enough birder, particularly with calls, to be a useful asset on a serious team - not to mention that until this very week, I've only had a learner's driving license (or none at all). But this year, the organisers decided to try out a new type of race - a three-hour version, which they called "Birdathon". Here's how it's supposed to work:
 "The ‘Birdathon’ is a super-strategic event that could take teams all day, or as few as three hours. It targets everyone, young and old, experienced and novice! Each team has three 1-hour blocks to bird watch over the course of the day, which they can choose to use at any time, and in any place. So one hour (or more) could be at your local park, or wetland, or it could be that patch of mallee or rainforest that’s a few hours’ drive away."

This, I thought, was a good way to dip my toe into the swirling pool of madness that is the competitive birding scene. It also suited me because of my busy work schedule, and its ability to be carried out at a couple of local sites rather than a 12 or 24-hour dash across half of NSW. I figured I could head on down, tick off 70 or 80 species, and be home in time for lunch.

My planning began about a week before race day (which would be Sunday the 30th, since I had work commitments on Saturday). I sat down with my laptop and, using eBird, worked out an approximate list of gettable species based on records from the month prior. I ended up with 74 species I reckoned wouldn't be too hard to pick up, and about 20 each in the 'unlikely' and 'probably not' categories.

Looking at these records I was able to fairly easily piece together my plan for sites to visit, and a few years of local experience gave me the order to visit them in. It was clear from the start that to maximize variety and get a high score, I'd need to spread my three hours out over a good range of habitats. Thankfully, Canberra isn't very big, so not only was picking my sites easy, but the distances between them were pretty small, allowing me to get from one to the next in fairly quick succession, without losing too much precious good birding time in between. The sites I settled on were Jerrabomberra Wetlands for the species of a more aquatic inclination, either Campbell Park or Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve for the woodland dwellers, and the Australian National Botanic Gardens to clean up the remainder. I knew that I'd have to start with Jerra, to get my eyes on the Crakes and Snipe that only come out into the open early in the morning, and then move on as quickly as possible to my woodland site to take advantage of the morning activity while it lasted. The gardens I felt I could pretty much do at my leisure, since my targets there were few, relatively easy and sedentary.

Armed with this plan, I headed out early on Thursday the 27th for my 'oiling' run with dad.

My hour at Jerrabomberra was promisingly productive - a good mix of waterbirds and bush birds, nothing unusual or even really noteworthy, but it netted me a solid 41 species, a good base to build on at my next site. The diversity of waterbirds was noticeably low though. Following the massive amount of rain the whole southeast of Australia has received in the last couple of months, the vast majority of our waterbirds have disappeared inland to breed. Coots especially - in some lagoons and lakes along the south coast where they normally number in the thousands, they have all but vanished. I knew this would cost me a couple of species such as Pink-eared Duck and Chestnut Teal, but I wasn't too concerned about it since most other teams in my category would face the same problem.

 I decided to try out Campbell Park next, since it's closer than Mulligans to the wetlands. By the time we arrived it was already beginning to warm up, and not a lot was calling - I started the timer and set out, but my optimism soon vanished. After an hour of traipsing over the hills I had collected only 15 new species. Nice species like Mistletoebird, Shining Bronze-cuckoo and White-throated Gerygone, but only 15. Time was running short since dad and I both had things to do in the afternoon, but I decided that come race day, I would take the risk in going to Mulligans instead.

Sunday rolled around, and mum and I (the official members of team "Gone Pishing") rolled out! We arrived at Jerrabomberra around 6, just before sunrise, and waited patiently for the birds to become active. At 6:35 we decided it was time - the timer was set, and we begun!

We started in the Bittern hide, and quickly noted down the first species for the morning in Pacific Black Duck, Eurasian Coot, Australasian Reed Warbler and Willie Wagtail. The nesting pair of Sacred Kingfishers put in a nice appearance, and a couple of Australasian Swamphens and a Dusky Moorhen were seen munching grass roots across the pond.

We moved on, stopping between the Bittern and Cygnus hides to pick up White-browed Scrubwren and Superb Fairy-wren, and a passing Silver Gull on its way to the sewage works across the road - although a scan of the poo-ponds revealed no ducks at all. The Cygnus hide gave us a pair of Australasian Shovelers (nice to see, since they were absent on the oiling run), and we continued on our way around towards the silt trap, steadily racking up species as we went. By the time we reached the woodland loop we were edging towards 30 species, with half an hour left to go. We picked up a couple of starter bush birds (Rufous Whistler, Yellow-faced and New Holland Honeyeaters, although there was no sign of the recent White-cheeked Honeyeater) before heading back for a second run at the main hides on Kelly's Swamp. This turned out to be a good plan, because we picked up several new birds for the morning, the highlight being two Spotless Crakes, one of which flew right across the pond and was visible in the reeds where it landed for a good two minutes.

The timer went off, and we finished our hour at Jerrabomberra with 43 species.

We made our way straight to Mulligans Flat from Jerrabomberra, and before long were walking over the familiar hill between Amy Ackman Drive and the reserve gate. We came across a large walking group just inside the gate, but quickly overtook them and started the list at 8:13am to the gurgling song of Grey Butcherbird.

Choosing Mulligans over Campbell Park turned out to be wise. The activity, both vocally and visibly, was much higher - before long we had another 10 with common woodland birds like Weebill, Noisy Friabird, Spotted Pardalote, White-throated Gerygone, White-throated Treecreeper and White-winged Chough. A detour from the path to the edge of a gully brought us a small mixed feeding flock with Golden Whistler, Buff-rumped Thornbill and Striated Pardalote, and as soon as we returned to the trail a group of Varied Sittellas flew in.

We walked northeast into the reserve for our entire hour, picking up some nice birds like Grey Currawong, Pallid Cuckoo and Superb Parrot before the timer went off and we closed the list at 26 species, giving us a total of 69 species for the morning!

We were very pleased with this total - given my estimates had put our list at between 70 and 80 species, to reach 69 in the first two hours was very encouraging. However, our third hour had to be put on hold, as I had been called in to work to cover for my boss, who had taken himself to hospital late the previous night with some chest pains (luckily nothing serious).

I finished work at 3, met up with mum again, and we continued down to the botanic gardens straight away. As we drove down, the weather was looking increasingly threatening, and by the time we arrived we knew we didn't have much of a window before the rain arrived. I decided not to start the list until we found our first new bird, and thankfully it didn't take long: a Brown Thornbill at 3:30pm took us to 70 species, and was quickly followed by King Parrot, Eastern Spinebill and Satin Bowerbird. A search along the bottom path near the CSIRO gate brought us another couple of species including the much hoped-for Gang Gang Cockatoo, before the rain started coming down heavily. We decided to call it quits, since the only birds we had missed that we stood a chance of reliably seeing in the gardens were Eastern Yellow Robin and White-naped Honeyeater, neither of which had so much as peeped at us thus far.

Team Gone Pishing finished the Twitchathon with a grand total of 76 species. Although Victoria has yet to complete their twitchathon this year (it was delayed a week so as not to coincide with Melbourne Cup Day), as things stand, we are sitting in third place nationally in the Birdathon event!!

Big thanks to mum for doing the driving and running around with me. And apologies to readers of this post for the lack of photographs! I decided to go hard and not bother with the camera for most of it.

Donations to Twitchathon causes are still open, and can be found here:

https://www.justgiving.com/campaigns/charity/birdlifeaustralia/birdlifeaustralia2016twitchathon

Please consider donating if you can, the money goes to great causes around the country. And if you didn't this year, perhaps consider forming a team in next year's race! As a first-time entrant, I can attest that it's great fun for anybody of any age and level of fitness or birding ability. You don't need to get first place to have a good time and fundraise for rare birds. Get involved!!

Our full species list can be found below. In other news, please check back to the blog soon, as I should be getting more content up soon! I'm booked on a Sydney pelagic this weekend with a bunch of the young birding crew, and I have plans to start writing up a few birding book reviews as well. Until then!

Julian

*H=Heard only

Jerrabomberra Wetlands (6:35am-7:35am)

1. Pacific Black Duck
2. Eurasian Coot
3. Australasian Reed-warbler
4. Willie Wagtail
5. Australasian Swamphen
6. Dusky Moorhen
7. Common Blackbird
8. White-browed Scrubwren
9. Silver Gull
10. Superb Fairy-wren
11. Grey Fantail
12. Black Swan
13. Australasian Shoveler
14. Magpie Lark
15. Masked Lapwing
16. Pacific Koel (H)
17. Australian Magpie
18. Pied Currawong
19. Common Starling
20. Red-browed Finch
21. Australian Wood Duck
22. Rock Dove
23. Golden-headed Cisticola
24. Red-rumped Parrot
25. Little Corella
26. Australian Raven
27. Welcome Swallow
28. Silvereye
29. Australasian Grebe
30. Australian Pelican
31. Yellow-rumped Thornbill
32. New Holland Honeyeater
33. Rufous Whistler
34. Red Wattlebird
35. Yellow-faced Honeyeater
36. Little Grassbird (H)
37. Crested Pigeon
38. Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike
39. Grey Teal
40. Crimson Rosella
41. Spotless Crake
42. Sacred Kingfisher
43. Cattle Egret

 Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve (8:13-9:13am)

1. Noisy Miner
2. Grey Butcherbird (H)
3. Noisy Friarbird
4. Striated Pardalote
5. White-throated Gerygone
6. White-winged Chough
7. Spotted Pardalote
8. White-throated Treecreeper
9. Weebill
10. Buff-rumped Thornbill
11. Galah
12. Golden Whistler
13. White-faced Heron
14. Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
15. Varied Sittella
16. Olive-backed Oriole (H)
17. Grey Currawong
18. Striated Thornbill
19. Brown-headed Honeyeater
20. Pallid Cuckoo (H)
21. Laughing Kookaburra
22. Mistletoebird (H)
23. Eastern Rosella
24. Grey Shrike-thrush
25. Dusky Woodswallow
26. Superb Parrot (H)

 Australian National Botanic Gardens (3:30pm-4:00pm - cut short due to rain)

1. Brown Thornbill
2. King Parrot
3. Eastern Spinebill
4. Satin Bowerbird
5. Fan-tailed Cuckoo (H)
6. Gang-gang Cockatoo
7. Common Bronzewing