Weedon’s World
Though it is not a competition at all, Mike has been taking some meticulous notes to see how his #My200birdyear is shaping up compared to previous years
Find out how Mike’s #My200birdyear challenge is taking shape
HOW IS YOUR birdwatching year going? Has the BW #My200birdyear ‘campaign’ motivated you to get out and do some more birding? It has me, though I don’t need much encouragement to get out there, to start with. It has so far been very interesting to see how people’s year lists develop at different paces. Which, of course, is a big part of the idea. I got a tweet the other day from someone questioning my carbon footprint, what with me gallivanting around to tick all and sundry. They also questioned why everything has to be a competition. This came after I reported an Iceland Gull I’d seen. I pointed out that the gull was only a four-mile cycle from home and I tried to explain that #My200birdyear is not supposed to be competitive, at all, but rather just motivational, inspirational and encouraging. It is (as I like to phrase it) to encourage people to put the ‘watching’ back into birdwatching; to nudge people away from TV and even magazine articles about birds, and towards enjoying the real thing in the field. Or (as I also like to phrase it), to encourage people to put the ‘bird’ back into birdwatching… The whole process of #My200birdyear has put a slightly different focus on how I look at my year list building. As you may be aware, I am an habitual (probably addicted) local year lister, keeping detailed spreadsheets of my birding around Peterborough since 2003. And, for reasons which have been lost in the vagaries of time, since 2008 I have been recording how many birds I have seen around here before the start of
April. I think the original idea was to compare lists to see if there was a correlation between how I got on in the first three months compared to the whole of the year. (Not much correlation yet, but never mind... ). So, this year is the tenth I have recorded my ‘end of March’ total for my local area. It is, as I write, 27 March, and this morning I added Blackcap and Sand Martin to my year list. That takes me to a provisional end of March count of 132 species. Of course, this is utterly meaningless on its own. But thanks to those nine previous counts, I can see instantly, that it represents my second best total for the time of year (I got 134 in 2012). Furthermore, those of you that have been reading this column for a while may remember that I like to separate a ‘core’ of species I expect to see every year from the ‘elites’, the rarer birds which require a little extra skill and/or luck. And, you guessed it, I have also recorded my end of March ‘elite’ totals since 2008. This year’s local year list so far contains 24 elites, which beats the previous best of 22, recorded in 2009 and 2012, which both ended with decent year totals. All in all, then, 2017 has had pretty decent start. But, so far, I have hardly mentioned any birds! It is time to put the bird back into this column. One of the fascinating aspects of local year listing is how one year can be so radically different from the last. Last year, I saw such local gold as Dartford Warbler and Black Redstart in the first three months. Not so, this year, but I have already seen six species which I didn’t see at all during the whole of 2016: Long-tailed Duck, Scaup, Glaucous Gull, Kittiwake, Mealy Redpoll, and Great Grey Shrike. All beauties, I am sure you will agree. Additionally, I have already had great eyefuls of Rough-legged Buzzard, Bean Geese, four Little Gulls (all early, according to my records), Cattle Egret and at least two Great White Egrets, two Bitterns and a pair of nesting Ravens and 20-plus Cranes (the latter couple of species are surely going to have to be struck off my ‘elite’ list for being too easy!). Over the last weekend, I added Garganey (we do pretty well for these scarce ducks in this part of East Anglia), a brief, passing Grey Plover, and Little Ringed Plover, a bird I always expect by the end of March, but one which has certainly declined as a breeding species around here, as the local gravel pits mature and their vegetation stabilises and smothers the habitat for the plovers. I still haven’t heard (or seen) a Tawny Owl, or a Grey Partridge or a Brambling and, who knows, I may have seen a Swallow or Wheatear or heard a Willow Warbler by the turn of the month, in a few days’ time. So, that just about covers me, so far. As I was saying, how is your birdwatching year going? Mike is an obsessive patch lister and keen wildlife photographer in his home city of Peterborough, where he lives with his wife, Jo, and children, Jasmine and Eddie. You can see his photos at weedworld.blogspot.com
One of the fascinating aspects of local year listing is how one year can be so radically different from the last