CAW in October and November and the SABAP2 category in Birding Big Day 2008

Following the successes of the inaugural Communal Atlasing Weeks (CAW) in August and September, SABAP2 will hold further CAWs in October and November. The November CAW will be SABAP2’s involvement in Birding Big Day 2008, and will include two weekends, so it will be called the LONG CAW.

The CAW in October is one week long, running from Saturday to Friday, 18–24 October.

Four of the five targets set by the September CAW were surpassed by irresponsible margins. For example, we thought that getting 11250 records in a week would be a good challenge. Instead we got 18000, and exceeded the target by 60%. The only target we failed to beat was 70 new pentads - this was probably a bit overambitious anyway, because it represents 10 new pentads a day. In the end we reached 61 new pentads, 87% of the target. The downside of the September achievement is that it sets phenomenal targets for us to try to beat in the October CAW. So the targets for the five categories:

Active participants (Target - 150)
Number of pentads covered (Target - 275)
Number of pentads covered for the first time (Target - 70)
Number of Cards submitted (Target - 325)
Number of records (Target - 18 000)

... so let us hope that the weather for the October CAW is good for birding, and that the arrival of the migrants swells the totals per checklist.

For the November LONG CAW, we plan not only to do the normal CAW things, but also to raise sponsorship for BirdLife South Africa’s Birding Big Day. The LONG CAW will be held over the period

Saturday 22 November – Sunday 30 November

One of the special things we would like atlasers to do during CAWs is to try to involve birders who are not yet involved in the project, and initiate them into the ways of SABAP2.