Times in Tanzania: Arusha Big Birding Day: 2nd year

Morning hike with Mt. Meru in the distance.

For the second consecutive year, we participated in the "big bird day". Last year was the inaugural "big birding day", which is described as:

"The Arusha Big Birding Day is a fun challenge where teams of 3-6 people try to identify as many bird species as possible starting at 12 noon on Saturday the 14th of May, and ending at noon on the 15th of May, 2016."

It's a fun event held worldwide that also has the more useful purpose of gathering data for census purposes. Here in Tanzania there is healthy community of birders, mostly professional, and although there is a bit of competition at the top, most of the participants are just looking for an excuse to bird!

This year I am much better at identifying birds than last year so I found it to be a more interesting experience. Because Ana and I are very casual birders, we never bird in the manner that we are required to during the big bird day. As soon as a species is positively ID'd, we move on to find more. There is very little watching bird behavior, taking pictures of the landscape, or taking a closer look to better learn rare species. Doing all the aforementioned activities is why I LOVE to go birding so inevitably I had my moments of frustration as I felt we were just rushing around wildly searching for birds (which we were definitely doing).

We ended up going with roughly the same team as last year. Two 13 year old boys, one a keen birder who has grown up in Tanzania, Ana, myself, and a guide named Peterlis. The team was sponsored by one of the boys parents whom own a lodge outside of Arusha National Park (Peterlis works for them).

Everyone meets at the same campsite in west Arusha and then disperse at noon following different routes. We were at a distinct disadvantage being the only team from Moshi and thus we didn't know all the local birding hot spots and habitats. The parents of one of the boys own a lodge adjacent to Arusha National Park so our route focused around that area.

We spent the first day in the dry acacia scrub between Mt. Meru and Mt. Kilimanjaro, eventually crossing through a vast plains with gazelle and zebra grazing before arriving at the lodge. The lodge is beautiful and we even had a buffalo pass through at night! In the morning we awoke to giraffes passing through and quickly took a walk to nearby pools before having a quick breakfast. We then headed to Arusha National Park before heading back to the meeting point. We arrived with only about 10 minutes to spare!

The overall winner saw 283 birds and we came in with 188. We improved on our count from last year (166), which is significant considering the more birds you see the harder it gets to see a new species. We finished first out of seven amateur groups, though there was a bit of controversy as we were thrown out of the amateur group and placed in the professional group at the last minute. Not making matters any better was the fact the "winning" amateur team contained a person that we have gone birding with several times that is paid to give bird ID trainings!

We also finished 12 out of 30 overall, which is a stunning achievement considering all the safari teams that we beat. I was very happy with our efforts and it really showed the improvement we are having in bird identification in the past year. We can't wait till next year!