January 2014: Farewell

 

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/