Back in business - sort of

Well I've been back in Ontario for a few days now so maybe it's time to make a post. I had a pretty amazing trip, and other than getting sick for a few days in Costa Rica, nothing major went wrong! I hope to do an in-depth series of posts detailing my trip (with pics, of course) over the next little while (or maybe few months), but how quickly I finish these will really depend on work. In a couple of days I am heading down to Long Point to start the field season, which in my case will last until at least December. This means I won't have a huge amount of time to work on blog posts, but I will do my best! I am currently slogging my way through a couple hundred checklists and submitting them to eBird (if you still haven't heard of it, go to ebird.org and check it out!). I've made it through the first 5 weeks of the trip in the 4 days that I've been home, so I expect I will be done in the next 2 days. In the meantime, since I won't know how many species I actually saw until that's done, here are some other trip stats:

Distance travelled: ~16 000km
By plane ~ 9050km
By car (rental) ~ 4200km
By public transit ~ 2000km
By foot ~ 650km
By boat ~ 120km

High temp: >50C humidex on a few occasions (38C without humidity) - Osa Peninsula, Juan Hombron Rd, Darien lowlands
Low temp: 7C on Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica (3450m elevation) - doesn't include windchill

Butterflies seen - way more than I could even begin to count, will do a post on these guys at some point.

Photos taken - >6000...I have a lot of work to do...

Ok that's enough for now, I'm sure more will pop up later on. I think I will be updating that little box in the top-right corner of the blog as I go, rather than just putting my current year total. If you really want to know how close I am to my goal of seeing 779 species this year, you can always check the Top 100 for the AOU area on eBird in a few days when I finish putting in my checklists.

Since I haven't edited any of my photos yet (other than these), here's a quiz! Leave a comment with your thoughts (don't be shy!). The first 3 photos are of a single bird, the last one is a different bird. I will even help out a bit and say these were taken in Panama.