Last Birder Standing

Inspired by the global eBird 2017 checklist-a-day challenge, we thought it would be fun to run a small, informal and purely friendly Last Birder Standing contest. Very simply, starting 1 Jan 2017, create at least one ‘complete’ birdlist every day, for as many days as you can manage. More details below.

• The challenge: look for birds every day, from 1 Jan 2017. Do this for an unbroken stretch of as many days as you can.
• Following eBird’s checklist-a-day challenge, we’ll set a minimum duration of 3 min for each list. (Why set such a low minimum duration? First, to lower the barrier for participation and ensure that as many people as possible and have as long an unbroken run as possible. Second, short lists are also useful from the data point of view!)
• Upload your birdlists to eBird. (An easy way for you to keep track of your birding.)
• The immediate target is to have at least one birdlist for all 365 days of 2017. But we’ll continue the contest unto 2018 and longer (if needed) until only one birder remains standing (ie, has maintained an unbroken daily run of birding).
• We suspect that despite our best intentions, the main reason to skip a day’s birding (the minimum is only 3 min after all!) will be because we forgot. So the Last Birder Standing will likely be the person who has an effective reminder system — perhaps an daily alarm on your phone, or an automated daily email, or (perhaps most effective) a note written on your mirror!
• To make it more fun, we ask that you register your name for this contest by dropping a line in the comments section below. Please note that it may take a little while for your comment to be approved and thus show up on the page. Take the daily birding pledge today!

Who has taken the daily birding pledge?

We have created a Facebook group for general encouragement and discussion about Last Birder Standing. If you name is listed below and you aren’t yet part of the group, please drop us a line. We realize that not everyone is on Facebook, and our apologies to those below who aren’t, but this was simply the most convenient platform we could think of..

1. Abhiram Sankar
2. Abhishek Gulshan
3. Abhishek Jamalabad
4. Abhishek Ravindra
5. Able Lawrence
6. Aisha Sultana
7. Ajay Gadikar
8. Akshay Surendra
9. AM Aravind
10. Andrew J. Johnson
11. Anish Acharya
12. Anish Aravind
13. Anuja Mital
14. Anup Prakash
15. Aparajita Datta
16. Aravind Amirtharaj
17. Arun B
18. Ashish Chavda
19. Ashritha Anoop
20. Ashwin S
21. Ashwin Viswanathan
22. Avinash Sharma
23. Balwant Negi
24. Bela Arora
25. Bhakti Salgaonkar
26. Bhanu Sridharan
27. Bharati Chaturvedi
28. Biang Syiem
29. Biswajit Chakdar
30. Brodie Talbott
31. C Sreekumar
32. Chetan Sharma
33. Chirag Munje
34. Chitra Patel
35. Dayani C.
36. Deepthi C
37. Dharmaraj Patil
38. Dhaval Vargiya
39. Elavarasan M
40. Ezra Rynjah
41. Ganesh Shama
42. Ganeshwar S V
43. Garima Bhatia
44. Gauri A. Achari
45. Gnaneswar
46. Govind Girija
47. Hakimuddin F Saify
48. Harshavardhan jamakhandi
49. Harshjeet Singh Bal
50. Hemanth Byatroy
51. Indira S
52. Jagadeesan Krishnan
53. Jai Govind
54. Jaichand Johnson
55. Javed Ahmed
56. Jaya Rakesh
57. Jayadev Menon
58. Jayu Munje
59. Jessica Luis
60. Joy
61. Kadambari Devarajan
62. Kalidass Shanmugam
63. Kalyan Varma
64. Kedar Champhekar
65. Ketaki Karandikar
66. Kiran Bagade
67. Komal Agrawal
68. Krishna Moorthy
69. Krishna Murthy
70. Kulbhushansingh
71. Lakshmikant Rajaram Neve
72. Lakshminarasimha R
73. Laura Mahrt
74. M Divin Murukesh
75. Madhusudhan Srinivasan
76. Malyasri Bhattacharya
    
77. Mamta Parmar
78. Manan Singh Mahadev
79. Mandar Bhagat
80. Marvelyn Dias
81. Mittal Gala
82. Mohandas Giriyappa
83. Monica Kaushik
84. Mridul Anand
85. Mrinmayee Thakur
86. Murugesh Natesan
87. Namassivayan Lakshmanan
88. Neeraj Amarnani
89. Niranjan A
90. Omkar Dharwadkar
91. P Jeganathan
92. Panchami Manoo Ukil
93. Pankaj Gupta
94. Parvaiz Shagoo
95. Pawan Dhall
96. Pooja Pawar
97. Pooja Pillai
98. Pradeep
99. Prasad Nataraj
100. Prashant Kumar
101. Prashant Mahajan
102. Prashanth NS
103. Praveen J
104. Prithiviraj S
105. Priya Tamma
106. Pronoy Baidya
107. Raja Bandi
108. Rajashree Khalap
109. Rajiv D’Silva
110. Rajneesh
111. Raman Kumar
112. Ranjini Murali
113. Ramit Singal
114. Rohan Chakravarty
115. Rohit Chakravarty
116. Rohit Naniwadekar
117. Rohit Pansare
118. Ronit Dutta
119. Rudraksha Chodankar
120. S. Anand
121. Saba Sharma
122. Sahana M
123. Sangita S. Mani
124. Sarbjit Singh
125. Selvaganesh K
126. Shailee Shah
127. Sherjin Joel
128. Shraddha
129. Shreya Dasgupta
130. Shiwalee Samant
131. Sneha Dharwadkar
132. Sneha Gupta
133. Somraj Gupta
134. Subha Choudary
135. Suhel Quader
136. Sujata Phadke
137. Sumit Bhale
138. Suguna R.
139. Surendhar Boobalan
140. Sushil Khekare
141. Sutirtha Lahiri
142. Swati Sidhu
143. Swetashree Purohit
144. T R Shankar Raman
145. Tshering Tobgay
146. Vaidehi Gunjal
147. Varun Kher
148. Vena Kapoor
149. Vidhya Sundar
150. Vijayalakshmi
151. Vikas
152. Vikrant Choursiya
153. Vinay Bharadwaj
154. Vinay Mishra
155. Vinay Nadig
156. Vinod
157. Vrinda Lath
158. Wes Rajaleelan
159. Yogesh Parashar

Postscript

By coincidence, an article has just been published (31 Dec) on the American Birding Association blog, by Ted Floyd, who has completed 10 full years of daily birding!

I suspect my daily bird logging, more than anything else, kept me going. It kept me focused; it kept me disciplined; it prevented me from getting distracted. Anyhow, I was hooked. There was to be no turning back. In the decades ahead, I would keep on birding, keep on learning about bird biology and identification.

---