NT versus Vic

Hi All, I live in Alice Springs. My brother-in-law lives in Melbourne. Last year I had long service leave and our family toured around for 100 days in WA. Before we left, the b-i-l challenged us to try to document how many different birds we could see. Alas, I caught the bug. As we neared the end of the year, we were in Melbourne for our regular Christmas visit to the relatives, staying at the b-i-l's house. He had decided to create a new trophy from one of his old hockey trophies, and the the WFSTwitch Trophy was born. The trophy has one of the ugliest Rainbow Lorikeets on it!
In 2011, we have our own little competition and a blog to follow one another's bird-watching exploits, as well as tallying up how many each person has at the end of each month. The website for anyone interested is: http://thewfstwitch.blogspot.com/
You can also see the trophy on the blog!
Returning to Alice Springs after such a long time away, our family has been amazed by the birdlife that previously we had taken for granted. The kids counted 15 different species on the way to school in the first week, quite remarkable considering it is only a 2 km drive.
So from absolute novice in bird-watching, to a person who spends a lot of time visiting likely bird watching areas and poo ponds, I am hence now keen to read, see, hear anything to do with birds.
thanks for reading.
Cheers,

Richard