.jpg)
WARNING, much of what is written
here is a repeat of the Birds of Allen
Road January blog.
Unlike Birds of Allen Road which in the end seemed to lack potential,
substance, not enough difference to impart fizz and wow, Birding the South Burnett has demonstrated marked development over
the past few years. While virtual
retirement appears to have done little for Allen Road, the additional leisure
time bestowed upon us in retirement has worked wonders for our South Burnett
birding. The recent statistics speak for
themselves:
January 2011 90 Species
January 2012 89 species
January 2013 116 species
January 2014 146 species
Looking through the January 2014
birding statistics for the South Burnett, it seems patently apparent that here more
time has equated to more birding, to more locations visited, as borne out by
the following simple table:
January 2011 14 locations visited
January 2012 10 locations visited
January 2013 14 locations visited
January 2014 26 locations visited
The rosy glow does not, however,
extend beyond the binoculars. To see and
to record in a field notebook is one thing; to collate and analyse via a
computer program is another; to write about it for a blog is altogether
bordering on being beyond the pale.
To add further pressures to an
already anxious mind, I am desperately attempting to maintain three blogs: Birds
of Allen Road and Birding Beyond the Pale in addition to Birding the South Burnett. Each has a reason for being there but
combined they create a formidable challenge and in the end I cannot use any one
of them to give the full birding picture.
Take January 2014 as a
pointer. The Allen Road tally amounts to
61 species; the South Burnett tally runs to an impressive 146 species. However, the overall January tally is
actually 170 species; a record
in itself, clearly over-hauling the previous best January score of 145 in 2007.
Birding Beyond the Pale, designed primarily as an outlet for all
those planned trips beyond the South Burnett, including overseas jaunts, ended
January with a meagre 42 species.
To complicate matters, Allen Road
is of course really only a subset of the South Burnett so those birds are
doubled up in each monthly report. All
three together amount to simple subsets of the Queensland folder – which does
register 170 species for the month!
As loathe as I am to pull myself
away from an enjoyable pastime – and you have to understand my deep-rooted
passion for writing to fully appreciate the enormity of the wrench- I have decided
that the time has arrived to put Birding
the South Burnett to bed.
This will be the last blog for the
South Burnett, at least in the forseeable short-term future. Farewell.
Keep an eye out for developments
at:
http://birdingsouthburnett.com/
