Secret weapons

Since the last update, I have been busy with office work and not been out birding at all actually. After all I am running my photography business and pictures need to be shipped and accountance needs to be done. 

My Big Year project is not possible without some aid from the outside world. I call them my secret weapons, and will certainly be of key importance to my success together with good planning and my own effort. 

Bird Alarm: 

Twitchers all over Norway and the other Nordic countries has this. It is messaging system, where whenever someone sees a rare or interesting bird anywhere they wiill beep this out on the system. They simply make a plot on the map, with some details about the species and behaviour of the bird. They make a bird alarm! And if its rare enough - soon after, birders from all over the country will already have startet their movements towards the locality. It would have been fun to attach a GPS device on birders to see how quickly they react and how their behaviour pattern from whatever occupied their time at the alarm moment suddenly changes. With this system, kindly sponsored to my Big Year project by the Norwegian birding organisation Feltornintologene, I will ensure to quickly get the message if something happens. Together with a network of friends and colleagues, I am sure that no birds will be seen without me knowing about it.

Private Aircraft:

If not any of the bigger airlines want to support you, what do you do? You arrange a private aircraft of course. So now I have a private aircraft, which always is available for my use should I need it. Im not a pilot myself, but a kind friend of me is. I don't think I need to explain this any further other than to say this will help if time is of the essence, which it usually is. 

Swarovski Eurovision 10x42:

My precious binoculars. This is by far the best binoculars I have ever looked through. It helps me every single day, and with them I see things I would never have been able to see before. Especially in low light conditions, their importance is unmatched. Needless to say, I am very happy that Swarovski Optik supports the project and kindly let me use their very best equipment.

Stjørdal Foto:

A big part of Big Year is also to document the event through pictures and film. Stjørdal Foto ensures me to have the right equipment for the job. If it anyway is something that I miss, Stjørdal Foto will quickly get hold of it for me, so that I am sure to always be properly equipped.

Well, apart from selling images and articles to my clients, much of the time the last week has been spent with editing last year's work. Since I don't have any pictures to show you from Big Year, I will show you two images I took in November while guiding in Antarctica for Aurora Expedition.

A male chinstrap penguin posing like a cross, praying for some female
 penguins I guess

  

Two Light-mantled albatrosses in display flight over the sea.
This species is one of my favorites in the world, and to see them in a
setting like this is just amazing.

Through one of my contacts, I received a message yesterday of a snowy owl feeding on a reindeer carcass. So on Monday, I will fly up to one the most remote corners of Norway, as far north you possibly can get and try to see this bird. Snowy owl is a species that always has eluded me, so make sure to keep visiting this blog to see how this stunt goes...

-EG-