Recently 10,000 Birds has been hob-nobbing with some of South Africa’s finest birders (well, two of them anyway - Mark Anderson and Adam Welz), and when we were asked if we’d give a shout-out for a very interesting photo challenge taking place in the Rainbow Nation to promote climate change awareness we could hardly say ‘No’ could we…

On 24 October 2009 bird photographers in South Africa will set out to photograph 350 species of birds in 24 hours to promote birding, bird conservation and in the 350-24-24 Bird Photo Challenge, a co-operative volunteer initiative by Birdlife South Africa, Birding Africa tour company and PlusPlusMinus webdesign.

The photos will be posted on a website to dazzle the world with South Africa’s fantastic bird diversity and to be a part of the amazing international day of climate awareness action being co-ordinated by 350.org

All bird photographers, professional and amateur, are welcome to join in. You’ll get to be part of an extraordinary international day of climate awareness (along with people in over 140 countries) show your images in a widely-seen forum and have a bulletproof excuse to be out snapping birds instead of doing something boring on October 24.

It’s for birds, the planet, and our future — a good reason to do just about anything.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

1. Bird photographers register on the Bird Photo Challenge website The website will display who will be photographing what and where, so that new registrants can choose not to overlap areas and target birds with existing participants. News and updates will be posted on the website and emailed to participants if necessary.
2. On Saturday 24 October all participants get out and photograph birds.
3. Then, as soon as possible — but definitely by 12 noon on Sunday 25 October — they select up to 10 of their best images and upload these to the Bird Photo Challenge website. Submission guidelines detailing image sizes, basic caption formats and other advice will be shown on the website and emailed to participants as October 24 approaches.
4. Pictures will be selected based on quality and inclusivity. This means that our photo editors will try to post the best pictures while including every photographer. There are no strict aesthetic rules for photos submitted, but featured birds must be unambiguously identifiable.
5. Challenge partner Birding Africa is hosting a website to display the day’s photos. Designed by PlusPlusMinus, this will be centered on a mosaic made up of photos of 350 species of birds. Clicking on any one of the ’tiles’ of the mosaic will bring up a photo with full caption information — which species of bird it is, where it was photographed, and by whom. Importantly, captions will contain links to other websites such as the photographer’s, or websites about relevant birding sites and conservation organisations, so as to promote birds and birding as much as possible.

   Since we may well get more than one great image of a species, and also pictures of more than 350 species, the website will have an overflow zone where these extra pictures will also be displayed.

6. The mosaic will evolve over the 24th and 25th of October as submissions come in and our volunteer photo editors pick and choose the best ones. We aim to have the final mosaic of 350 photos locked down by the end of Sunday 25 October for the world to see.

We will link the website to birding sites around the world, and other websites involved with 350.org’s day of action, thus guaranteeing a wave of visitors to see fantastic images of fantastic South African birds and learn about birding and conservation in our super-diverse country. Lekker hey?

If you have ANY QUESTIONS please look over the Frequently Asked Questions section. If you don’t find an answer please email the Bird Photo Challenge volunteers on 350@birdingafrica.com and we’ll get you the information you need as soon as possible.

For more information about the INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION visit the 350.org website.