2014/15

I feel like I didn't post enough of my adventures from last year to really do an in-depth review post, so I'll keep this brief. 2014 was an eventful year for me, filled with travel and generally living a nomadic lifestyle. This didn't lend itself well to keeping the blog going, as I often had limited (or no) internet access, or if I did it was following a 12-17h work day and I didn't feel like posting! Last year I found myself visiting 8 different countries (48 provinces/states) and racking up over 1000 species of birds, about half of which were lifers. Seeing 1000 species in my life was something I had been hoping for since I first started birding and doing it in a single year was simply amazing! Here is a short summary:

January - at home in the Sault, scheming! Then off to Mexico

February - Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama

March - Panama back to the Sault, then to Long Point to start work

April - based at Long Point, going to various work sites all over southern Ontario

May - same deal then shipped out to New Brunswick where I was based out of Sackville for most of the summer, setting up towers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia

June - NB/NS tower work with a 10-day trip to Seal Island for Blackpoll research

July - a week in NB/NS then off to Quebec for 3 weeks of towers along the St. Lawrence river and capping it off with 2 days on Les Iles-de-la-Madeleine as a sort of working birthday present!

August - shipped off to Bon Portage Island for more Blackpoll work

September - BP and then to Seal Island for a month

October - Seal back to BP

November - off the islands and into the office in Wolfville, with a brief sojourn around Nova Scotia checking on towers

December - Nova Scotia, back to New Brunswick for a few days then a drive back to Long Point, quickly followed by a 10-day trip to Barbados and some time in Guelph catching up with old friends to finish off the year!

Other than being somewhat sedentary for the fall, I was almost always on the move, and ended up travelling somewhere around 65 000km for the year (by plane, car, bus, boat, bike, foot, etc). I met a lot of great people along the way, making new friends and catching up with people I hadn't seen in quite a while. It was also fun to practice my (terrible) Spanish at various points through the year, surprisingly not just while in Latin America!

2015 is already shaping up to be a similar deal to 2014, as I kick it off in Ontario before heading to the tropics to ride out the rest of the winter. Stay tuned for more info on that, as well as my Central America 2014 trip report - I actually have most of it written already, I just need to add in some photos and then you'll have about 20 posts to read while I am on yet another adventure!

I haven't really made any resolutions for 2015, but keeping my eBird-a-day challenge going and seeing another 1000 species seem to be in the cards!