HANDY HINTS ON STARTING AND RUNNING A TWITCHATHON TEAM

  • Choose to join or start a team made up of people with similar aspirations to your own. Try to get a good mix of skills. Anyone purporting to be “... not bad on calls...” should be roped in immediately! People with some local knowledge of spots around the state could be pretty handy too. Share out the organisational chores, reconnoitring, driving, etc.
  • Design a route that allows a fairly direct run to your finish line, without too much backtracking, but one with good habitat diversity, species richness, and has familiar stops for reliable birds. Avoid areas that have large expanses of homogeneous habitat. Plan to cover arrange of productive sites. Keep long, bird-less driving stretches until after dark, if possible, and ensure that it is safe to do so.
  • Don’t be tempted to start too far away from your finish line: the benefits of extra species will be cancelled out by too little time spent looking/listening, especially at your final site(s)!
  • Long periods spent chasing single species (no matter how rare or spectacular) are wasted time. Numerous short-medium stops in varying habitats for reliable (usually common) birds are the ones that keep the total ticking over.
  • Think about weather-proofing your route. Will vehicle access be OK if it rains? Is the start point going to be OK on a hot day? Will sites be protected from strong winds (and different wind direction on different days)? .... and so on.
  • Have a race plan with birds, route and estimated timing details - and try to stick to it unless conditions are completely against you. Have a plan B! ...but guard against prematurely losing your nerve on plan A.
  • Know your bird calls, and be familiar with the birds of your route. Without picking up on calls, you'll give away about a 20-30% advantage to other teams at the outset. If ID takes too long or fails, the scenario is similar.
  • Reconnoitre all sites in the weeks prior to the race. It’s very disappointing to roll up on the big day and find that conditions and bird abundance have changed completely since last year. Scouting trips can also be good team building opportunities and a good time to hone skills, such as call recognition.
  • Make sure you have adequate food, water and rest. Have a few early nights before the big day; good quality sleep will be scarce on race eve and during the event!
  • Take good optics - binoculars for each team member and at least one scope, if possible.
  • Get plenty of sponsors and raise money for worthy bird conservation projects.