Let the countdown begin. Noah Strycker is a mere 39 species from seeing more bird species in a single year than any other human being! Think about that, approaching half of the world’s bird species in just nine months time!
No one can appreciate the magnitude of this amazing accomplishment more than the current World record holders Alan Davies & Ruth Miller. In 2008 they went on their „Biggest Twitch“ tallying a dizzying 4,341 bird species in 365 days worldwide. The amazingly, fun read by the same name (The Biggest Twitch) chronicles their incredible tale where they best the previous world record big year by nearly 680 species!
At the British Birdwatching Fair on August 20th, I spoke to both Ruth & Alan between customers visiting the Leica stand. They had high praise for Noah’s blistering pace and endurance. After hearing the next stops on his planned itinerary Ruth predicted Noah would break their record in India.
On that date, August 20th, Noah was in Tanzania and the new birds he was adding per day had stalled significantly. As example, year to date through September 14th, Noah has averaged 16.7 new bird species added each day. In South Africa he had tallied an average 16.9 new bird species per day, in Kenya 15.8, then in 12 days in Tanzania a mere 6.6 new species were added daily. Noah moved to Uganda on August 28th and saw a slight up tick in the new birds, but still averaged well below the annual average at 9.1 new adds daily over that 2 week period. Only 3 days in to his time here Noah sent me an e-mail in which he wrote, „I don’t expect to see many new species in the next week while I’m in Uganda, as I’ve already seen more than 70% of the species here, but with Livingstone we will nail down everything we can…“
Part of Noah’s unforeseeable slow down in new species toward the end of his African adventure was due to great success early on here, adding 1140 new bird species over 79 days on the African continent (June 25 – Sept 11).
New species aside though, Noah has continued to entertain & inform us through his daily updates on the Birding Without Borders blog. Capturing fun images as the one above and sharing iconic species images like the Shoebill below!
Since leaving Africa, Noah added 39 new species near Dubai on day one. Then on to India where he tallied 23 and 36 species on the second or third days respectively… At day’s end on Sept 14 Noah’s total species total for 2015 sat at 4,303 – thirty-eight to tie the world record and thirty-nine to reach uncharted territory! Follow along to see history made – live! We’ll be sharing this on the Leica Birding Facebook page, Twitter… 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…