Collaborative list – December 2018

So what do you want first? The numbers? The accolades? The lifers?

December’s collaborative results also summarises the year’s efforts, so this is December 2018 and the rest of 2018 all rolled into one sentence.

9 beats contributed 140 checklists from 8 countries (USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Bahamas, Costa Rica, India and Serbia) through December which accounted for 829 species, bolstering the year list (comprising checklists from 27 countries), which finished at 2259 from 1861 shares and brings the life total to 3567 (48 countries and 4742 checklists) up from 3272 in December 2017.

Last year, Pat was the only beat invited to the awards ceremony and he swept the board. This year the big prize must go to Tom who has pushed himself, right to the wire to acheive a magnificent score for a self-funded, wife-organised, wife-sponsored Little Big Year, accounting for 57% of the total. And Pat gets to keep the awards in the remainder of the categories.

In reverse order, the medals were awarded for “most species seen in a country”, to Australia with 420, USA got the silver, scoring 556 while the runaway winner was Costa Rica with 646 species.

May I extend my thanks to all the beats. Without your contributions, many and varied, or few and consistent, the collabaorative list would be a very paltry affair. So please keep at it and keep sending me your shared checklists. A big thank you must also go to eBird whose listing software makes it possible.

Best wishes to you all for 2019, keep safe and keep birding.