Initial deatils about Pakshi Dinam

HOW TO CONDUCT:
The Pakshi Dinam will be part of a larger all India Birdraces (which has already been conducted in several cities in the country) – since this is the first such event in Kerala, the competition part of the event can be much subdued in our case as we are hoping for more participation than twitching. A named team (e.g.The Spiderhunters!) of four people, each with at least bird watcher who can identify most of the common species, shall visit any area(s) in traveling distance from dawn-to-dusk and try to see as many species as possible. However, they have to assemble at the end of the day (6pm) to submit the results and participate in the concluding sessions. The forms can be collected later by the state coordinator and results published in popular media. Read more about the rules of the BirdRace on the official website of India Birdraces @ http://www.indiabirdraces.com

HOW TO ORGANISE:
Mumbai, Bengaloru and other big cities worked around the problem very easily, However, birding fraternity in Kerala is more decentralized. Hence, we would require multiple gatherings. So for 2007 since this is the first year we will have 3 official gatherings for the whole of Kerala. These gatherings will be in the cities are Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram. We would require volunteers in each city to organize the event there. We hope to be able to cover more cities and districts in the coming years.


WHO WILL ORGANISE/SPONSER:
Organization of the event, needless to say, shall be the responsibility of us, the birders. We would require a good bunch of volunteers in the three cities to bring success. For funding and support, HSBC bank has agreed to sponsor Pakshi Dinam 2007. Of course, we would require some free hands to run the show while most of us would be in the field with our teams.

PUBLICITY:
The event should be announced shortly in some dailies, news-groups and news channels. If we can get some distinguished guest (like the Forest Minister) to preside over the concluding session at the state capital, then it would a good publicity for the subsequent year.

With this posting, We would like to know your views and gain support for organizing such a recurring event in Kerala for this year and the years to come. If we do it well, this might be the first of its kind event for the country when a whole state is participating in a birding event on a one single day.

Best rgds
Praveen

Slightly modified by Sahil from the original message posted on Keralabirder (yahoo group)