We prepare for the British Birdwatching Fair. We’ve taken a couple of days out of our hectic birding schedule to make sure that our presentation is ready for the forthcoming Birdfair at Rutland Water, Lincolnshire. We’re giving a half-hour talk in the Events Marquee on Saturday 16th, and somehow we want to summarise all we’ve seen and experienced in 7 months, 16 countries and 2930 species of bird! No easy task, believe us, but we hope to share a real flavour of The Biggest Twitch.
It’s also given us a chance to review our birding progress versus target. We had hoped to leave Peru on over 3000 species so we’re a little bit behind, but may be able to make it up in the coming months. Having now also reviewed our finances, however, this may prove rather tough as we’ve already spent the vast majority of our budget for the full twelve months in just seven! It’s not that we’ve been splashing the cash around extravagantly but like everyone else, we’re finding the rising costs of fuel and travel have far exceeded our forecast made when we planned The Biggest Twitch. So the rest of the year is rather uncertain as we have already had to drop several countries from our itinerary and may well have to cut back even further.
To make matters worse, we had a real shock this week when we checked Surfbirds 2008 World Year Listings to discover that we have some serious competition catching us up fast.
But we’ve put everything we have into this and we’re determined to continue by some means or other to break the world record! So don’t be surprised if you see us passing the hat round at the Birdfair!!!
Posted 8th August, Cusco, Peru