Azores Ebird Personal Records Update

Getting through the winter work list. Spent the last week digitising my records/notebooks from the Azores since my first visit there in 2001. Turns out my Azores Life List is 253 (although that includes Cat E, Mandarin and Rose-ringed Parakeet but also lumps American Herring Gull and Green-winged Teal). Apparently I'm second in the Azores Ebird listing ranking, with Ruben (top local birder) at No 1. I don't stand much of a chance staying at No 2 as a visitor to the islands but it's been a lot of fun inadvertently listing while exploring.

Here's some of the photos I've uploaded HERE. Azores Ebird HERE.

 It's been a great trip down memory lane from my first visit in 2001 and then the gull exploration trips in the early 2000s (found Short-billed Gull, a first for the WP and lots of other wintering vagrants including 20+ American Herring Gulls, Forster's Tern, Bonaparte's Gulls etc. Write ups HERE and HERE) and then to the ground breaking Corvo 2005 exploration trip (Write ups HERE and HERE; found White-eyed Vireo, a first for the WP and loads more) and then the Pelagic exploration trips from 2007 (Write up HERE). Alongside that the Corvo Autumn birding was growing year on year (Corvo Blog HERE and Reports HERE) and then in more recent years we have been establishing the Natural History Trip and helping to grow the Birding and Wildlife Community (Website HERE). 

An amazing journey and certainly looking forward to the future especially next year with the next exploration trips that will be focusing on the moths and butterflies and trying to find some mega lep migrants.  

It's amazing to think of how much birding and birding technology has changed through the duration of this project and frightening/exciting to think of where it will go over the next 20 years. Presumably the trends will continue upwards towards growing citizen scientists around big data systems (Ebird, I-Naturalist etc) and AI (Merlin, ObsIdentify etc)  with local perspectives (Local Ebird, Local Reports and papers) and development of more sustainable ecotoursim (and less mass tourism etc) and local sustainable system development with closer integration of citizen science and sustainable computer governing systems/social credit/natural capital/carbon credit systems as Capitalist tipping points (climate and ecological collapse) are passed.