New birding blog!

I've decided to set up this little blog to share some of my bird photos and birding adventures with friends, family, and anyone else who is interested beyond the usual brief highlights I post on Facebook. 

I'm intending to do a lot of birding this year, despite having a lot on my plate with my final year of uni! In July I'm heading up to Uluru and Alice Springs for the first time, and I'm really excited to see the different birds up there. Aside from that, I'll be getting around southern SA as much as possible, hopefully doing a bit of camping and hiking. 

I'd like to attempt to tick off all of the birds that are regulars on the Fleurieu Peninsula, where I live. I've got the "Fleurieu Birds" book by Peter Gower, which has helped me a lot previously in tracking down species I want to see, as well as finding new places to go birding, with great descriptions of parks and reserves on the Fleurieu, and the birds that have been recorded there. I also refer a lot to eBird.org, where I also post my own bird lists.

This year I'm keeping a year list, as well as (hopefully!) adding to my life list. The only year I've previously kept a year list was 2014, when I ended up with 155 species. I didn't exactly "go hard", but I did get around 50 lifers that year, as I was working on my ID skills a lot, and was able to add quite a few shore birds, my first sighting of my beloved Rainbow Bee-eater, as well as a lot of QLD species from a brief trip to Cairns. 

Rainbow Bee-Eater, Lower Light, November 2014

So far this year I'm up to 91 species. Not too bad considering it's only mid-March and I didn't keep any records for the first six weeks of the year. However now that most of the common, easy to find birds have been ticked off, adding more will be more difficult. Of course my NT trip will definitely help with that!