Birdlife Victoria

Hi birders, It’s that time of year again to start planning your entry in this year’s Birdlife Victoria Twitchathon. This year we are running three competitions – the 24-hour Twitchathon, the 8-hour Twitchathon, and for the first time, a Big Sit! This year the competition will be run over the weekend of 16th and 17th November. The idea of a Big Sit is that instead of traipsing all over the state, your team remains within a 5.2m (17 foot) circle for 24 hours! Hopefully you know your teammates pretty well. The aim of the Big Sit is still to identify as many species as possible within the 24 hour period, but without moving – so this competition would appeal to those that are either not able to or don’t want to spend their weekend driving. The second major change that we’ve made to the competition this year is that ALL team registration and ALL sponsorship is now done online using the well-known charitable donation and sponsorship website, JustGiving. This has the benefit of allowing teams to register right up to the last minute. The other main benefit is that all sponsors will immediately receive their receipt for tax deduction purposes. Go to http://www.justgiving.com/birdlifeaustralia to register your team. Detailed instructions for registering a team are available from http://www.birdlife.org.au/locations/all-victoria-statewide/conservation-ini tiatives-vic. Once you have registered your team you will automatically create a web address in the form of http://www.justgiving.com/teams/your-team-name. Simply give this web address to your sponsors so that they can sponsor or donate on behalf of your team. Detailed instructions for sponsoring a team are also at http://www.birdlife.org.au/locations/all-victoria-statewide/conservation-ini tiatives-vic. All proceeds from the BirdLife Victoria Twitchathon are used to fund ornithological research in Victoria. Each year BirdLife Victoria selects a number of tertiary students conducting bird-related research in Victoria and funds part of their research projects. More details on this are also available at http://www.birdlife.org.au/locations/all-victoria-statewide/conservation-ini tiatives-vic. Good luck to all participating teams! Unfortunately I am overseas from now until the week of the Twitchathon (which means the Gang-gang Gang will have no time to scout our Twitchathon route prior to the event). If you have any questions regarding the JustGiving web site, please contact Edward Elston at BirdLife Australia National Office – edward.elston@birdlife.org.au. For information or basic advice on the Twitchathon, please contact Tim Bawden – tbawden@live.com.au. Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria =============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au http://birding-aus.org ===============================