The Biggest Twitch - birding and blogging all over the world!

DON’T get me wrong, the birding in Wales can be great! This year’s seen an amazing number of rarities and vagrants on our doorstep: Red-flanked Bluetail, Red-breasteed Flycatcher, Yellow-browed Warblers, Hume’s Yellow-browed Warbler, Desert Wheatear, Pechora Pipit, and Great White Egret all spring to mind.

But Alan and I decided we wanted to bird further afield.

And what started out as a simple gap year for oldies, bimbling our leisurely way around the world looking at birds, has now turned into a world record breaking attempt: to see more bird species in a single calendar year than has ever been achieved before!

Mad?

Probably.

Exciting?

Definitely!

We’ve got our work cut out with the current target of 3,662 species to beat, but that’s helped us cherry-pick our destinations as we aim for the best birding hotspots around the world.

Southern Masked Weaver from Africa, Namibia

As well as our essential bins and scopes, we’ll be armed with video and digital cameras as we travel as we aim to record as much of our adventure as possible.

We’ll be uploading a diary with news of our progress and bird photos onto our website as we go, www.thebiggesttwitch.com so do log on to see how we’re doing!

And before anyone mutters about global warming and carbon footprints, we want to use The Biggest Twitch as a vehicle to raise the profile of wildlife conservation.

We’ll be visiting various conservation projects around the world and writing about them on our website and in our forthcoming book of The Biggest Twitch, and where possible promoting their work in any media interviews.

Nutcracker in Finland

But we’re not just talking about it. We also want to raise funds to go directly into wildlife and habitat conservation by supporting the Mindo Cloudforest Foundation.

MCF is based in Ecuador, one of the key destinations on our itinerary for next year. MCF works with local landowners to protect unspoiled cloudforest habitat and restore cleared farmland to its original state for the benefit of its wildlife, particularly birds.

Ecotourism, including birding trips, is then encouraged in the area with the revenue generated benefiting the locals.

It’s a successful formula which is being rolled out across a greater area.

The World Land Trust is acting as our intermediary both here in the UK and in the USA so donors can give funds in either sterling or dollars.

Our website has the details of how to make a donation, so there’s another reason to log on to www.thebiggesttwitch.com and take a look!

So do wish us well in our venture, and we’ll be back to tell you all about it in 2009!