Collaborative List 2017 – February

The beats have been mostly sedentary during February with only Corey venturing beyond his normal range. Tom has made an altitudinal migration, but stayed within his accepted beat. Redgannet has been wandering aimlessly as is his brief. Last year beats were being spotted way beyond their usual habitat with checklists shared from India, Puerto Rico and Israel. It might be difficult to increase on last February’s score of 826.

Submissions for February have been received from Austria, Australia, UK, Japan, Costa Rica, Serbia, Mexico, USA, The Bahamas and Lichtenstein.

146 shared checklists (an increase on last year’s 97, well done chaps) noted 664 species (ooooh, down on 826 from last February) and brought the yearly total to 1063 (1303 at this time in 2016, ouch!).  The life total has been pushed to 2724 by means of Corey’s meanderings and Pat ceaselessly bashing the forests of Costa Rica.

It is good to see that the westerners have picked up the gauntlet after their humiliation in the first list and are currently out-birding the eastern hemisphere by 771:345. Again, this indicates a lack of crossover either side of the prime meridian; less than 5% so far. (771+345)-1063=53/1063×100=4.99%.

FYI, the line dividing the east and west hemispheres does not strictly correspond with the 0 line of longitude at Greenwich, but in this instance, the apparent heresy to the gazetteers’ creed is actually sensible and acceptable.It uses the zoogeographical ecozones and denotes North, Central and South America (Nearctic and Neotropical realms) as western and the rest of the world (Palearctic, Afrotropical, Indomalayan, Australasian) as eastern.

The line passing down through the Atlantic separates Iceland from Greenland and passes to the west of the Atlantic islands within the 25W line of longitude, employing a tiny kink to include the Azores and a scoop to pick up the Cape Verde Islands. The Pacific is divided through the Behring Strait, leaving St Lawrence and The Aleutian Islands to the east and embracing all the south Pacific island groups into the Australasian Realm.