I'm sorry

I have to excuse myself for not having posted anything since 4 month. Well yesterday I made a post, but that post was looong overdue and I wanted to post it almost those 4 month ago, but had to finish the maps. Now I hope will be blogging more often, since I will probably have more freetime now. School is over for me and I will leave Hamburg in less than one and a half month to live on the island of Spiekeroog in the North Sea for one year, where I will have to work with tourists and birds. I will count and map the birdlife of the island and guide and inform tourists about the island and its wildlife. I'm already excited about that.

During the last month many interesting things have happened, I visited two new and very interesting countries - Ireland and Senegal - I passed my finals, spent three weeks as a lifeguard on the island of Föhr. I added several birds to my life-, yard-, area- and yearlists and saw some rarities, which were: 2 Red-breasted geese in the Wedeler Marsch, at least 1 Pied Wagtail and 2 Horned Grebes, which are not a rarity in Germany but are super-rare in Hamburg. I will try to catch up with those things and report more often from now on...

Travel maps

In an Internet community of other young birders one guy came up with a map of the counties he had already visited or driven through in the United States. The idea was eagerly adopted but many other communtiy members and Chris West made even a post about this in his blog (Swallowtailedkite.blogspot.com). I thought it might be a nice idea to follow his example, but since I have never been to the US I used a map of Germany and here's the result
Dark blue = Provinces i visited, light blue = Provinces I drove through

I also made a map of Ecuador, where I lived for one year. I have been to Azuay, Cotopaxi, Esmeraldas, Galápagos, Imbabura, Manabí, Napo, Orellana, Pastaza, Pichincha, Sucumbíos and Tungurahua and drove through Chimborazo, Guayas, Santa Elena and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.

And here's an even more detailed map with the so called cantons of Ecuador I've birded in (dark blue) or driven through (light blue). (Unfortunately the Galápagos Isles are missing, but I've been to Baltra, Santa Cruz, Santa Fé and Floreana)

And as I have travelled quite a bit through the world I also made a map for the whole world. Those are the countries I have been to already (blue):
Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Maldives, Morocco, Netherlands, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia and Turkey.
The countries Germany and Ecuador are coloured red, because I have lived there.