Yard Birding Surprises!

I’ve been birding from our rooftop every evening and some mornings since lockdown started and just this afternoon reached fifty species with a flyover Shikra! It’s been a lot of fun being able to bird even in the middle of Dhaka during the lockdown, and I’ve had some awesome surprises along the way! My yard list has made it to 58 with some cool new yard birds like Eurasian Hobby (a lifer!), Oriental Honey Buzzard, Black-winged Kite, and best of all a flock of 8 Glossy Ibis! The ibis were actually the first record for Dhaka division!

One thing motivating me to bird is a fun yard challenge put together by Matt Smith the founder of Fantasy Birding. He put together 7 teams of nine individuals mainly from the US and Canada, but each team also has one overseas player. The goal was to see how many species you can observe during four 2 week slots. There would be winners for each two week duration and for the whole competition. Each species observed by a team is worth a point and any new yard birds are worth a bonus point whether or not your team already has that species. My team, the Unsociable Weavers, was dead last for the first two weeks stretch, but we’ve pulled an amazing comeback and are now in first among the original 7 teams!

You can check out the leaderboard for the competition here, but you have to add in the bonus birds if you want to see who is truly in first 😉

It’s been unusually overcast for April, but that makes it cooler which is nice! Unfortunately since I’m usually birding in relatively early morning or late afternoon that means the photos aren’t great, but here’s a bunch of random photos from this month that either turned out decently or show a cool bird.