The team Some Nature Lovers became winners at a birding rally held in Tomsk

4 october 2023

Tomsk, October 3, 2023. The names of the winners and runners-up of the birding rally held in Tomsk at the end of September have been unveiled. The tournament had been organized as part of The Land of the Lapwing project implemented under SIBUR's social investment program - The Formula for Good Deeds - with the help of Birds and People, a non-profit partnership.

A birding rally is a team competition where participants are required to drive their cars along a certain route in the allotted timeframe, take pictures of and then correctly identify as many species of birds as possible.

Elena Snezhko, Head of the Formula for Good Deeds social investment program:
“Tomsk hosted its first-ever birding rally last year. Since then, a community of like-minded people has sprung up in the city. These are people who enjoy studying birds and are eager to share their observations. We are pleased to see that Tomsk's residents backed the Land of the Lapwing project and took an interest in birding. Tournaments such as this not only help the contestants learn more about Siberia's birds, but also make a substantial contribution to the efforts focusing on monitoring the area's biodiversity as the birdwatchers diligently record all their bird sightings in a special observation database”.

A total of more than 30 birders (as amateur birdwatchers are called), grouped into 10 teams, turned up at the start of the tournament. All willing residents of Tomsk and guests of the city were encouraged to participate, since no special training was required to attend the rally! Those who are new to ornithology were provided with maps showing the most likely bird sighting locations in the area. The rally's route was about 85 km long. It ran along public roads, accessible to any passenger vehicle. The racers visited Mikhailovskaya and Solnechnaya Groves, Kopylovskoye Lake, the bank of the Bolshaya Kirgizka River, and crossed the finishing line at Okolitsa Rural Park.

Following that, the crews spent three days trying to properly identify the species of the birds in their photos and filling out a special checklist. Having examined these checklists, a jury made up of professional ornithologists selected the tournament winners and runners-up.

Sergey Gashkov, Chairman of the tournament's jury, a department head at Tomsk State University's Zoological Museum:
“This year, the birding rally's participants succeeded in taking photos of 40 bird species, including the great gray strike and the rustic bunting, the species that are red-listed in the Russian Federation. Somewhat out of season were the sightings of the black kite and the white wagtail. Some species that last year's birding rally's attendees failed to capture on film were photographed this time around including the common pochard, the tufted duck, the olive-backed pipit, and the scaly thrush. I would like to thank all the contestants for their help in monitoring birds inhabiting the Tomsk region!”

The birding rally's winning team was the team that called itself Some Nature Lovers. It had managed to photograph and correctly identify 36 species of birds. The second place was taken by the Fieldfares team, with the third prize going to the Witnesses of the Bean Goose.

Alexander Popov, captain of the Some Nature Lovers team:
“My friends and I got into birdwatching about three years ago. We started traveling to various biotopes and adding photos of new bird species to our personal collections. We had earlier taken part in such tournaments by correspondence, but this was the first time we took part in a live birding rally since we hadn't been able to put together a team for last year's competition. We were somewhat disappointed with the weather in the morning, but this did not stop us from feeling the thrill and excitement of the tournament. In the end, we managed to complete the route in the allotted timeframe and photograph quite a lot of species.”