Day 338 - Making My Way Around Narnia

As of the writing of this post I have visited 86% of Narnia's parishes/counties/districts in 2016--whatever you would like to call them. I should have visited all of them...

The problem with big year birding is you tend to stick to the usual locations, the hot spots, and the areas where you know birds are found. This means not wasting time traveling to every corner of your state just to say you've been. Of the counties I didn't visit, only 1 had a species I didn't get that I should have this year--another blunder that might be a costly error for my total come December 31. The rest simply didn't have anything unique that I couldn't find elsewhere in the state. Still, I covered most of Narnia.

Often times when I posted, I used names of areas from the map of Narnia in the place of the real names of places I was visiting to try and give context. Now my state is not a square, (hint: I don't live in Wyoming or Colorado), but I tried to use the map pretty close to point out things in the north, like the Witch's Castle or Frozen Lake. Just like places in the south included Anvard and Aslan's Camp (I didn't use the word "camp", but you get the idea). In the east was Cair Paravel, a place I have a deep affinity for and one of Narnia's most prominent features.


I visited all the well known birding hotspots in Narnia this year, including the Archenland, the Lamp Post, Owlwood, the Frozen Waterfall, Shuddering Woods, The Stone Table, the Archen River, The Great River, and the Rush River. I never made it to the Cauldron Pool in the western region--in fact, I largely avoided the west central portion of Narnia this year. In past years I would chase vagrants in this part of Narnia, but 2016 didn't provide anything to chase.

While this may all sound like mumbo-jumbo, there is a method to my madness. I drove 1,000's of miles around the state, walked hundreds, and spent hundreds of hours enjoying the endless beauty inside this wardrobe. When the clock strikes midnight in just 4 weeks, I'll emerge. A year will have passed since I entered, and the world will have gone on as if nothing ever happened. I'll never venture back into THIS world, Narnia will still be here to enjoy, but not in some shrouded, strange, game I'm playing...

New birds today: 0
Year List: 353

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