Garden year list
If you’re hooked on ‘year-listing’ as a result of Bird Watching’s #My200birdyear challenge, why not take it further by garden year-listing? It has transformed the lives of a group of Norwich birders
What must the neighbours think? At 7am on a dank day in late 2017, I am prancing around my garden in my pants, literally jumping for joy while screaming “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Winning-goal-in-the-lastminute-of-extra-time celebrations barely get more exuberant than this. For I have seen a Hawfinch. More pertinently, I have watched a Hawfinch flying over my garden. Right now, that means the world to me. I am among nearly 20 local birders participating in the Norwich Garden Bird Year-list Challenge. We are in November – the home straight – so every new species for the list, such as that hefty-billed finch, is worth its weight in golden feathers. While first place in the challenge is a foregone conclusion, the battle is on for other podium positions. Thanks to the Hawfinch invasion, I am a contender. Richard Moores instigated the challenge prior to New Year’s Day 2016 in response to an imminent seismic shift in his life. Becoming a father would dramatically constrain his birding. Richard’s solution was a garden-based challenge. His initiative came to enchant us all. The rules were simple. As long as you could see or hear the bird while you were in your house or garden, the species counted on your garden list. The bird could be fossicking on your lawn or migrating hundreds of metres overhead. What mattered was the placement of your feet. The challenge – the UK’S first such event, we think – hooked Norwich birders like nothing before. Bird feeders were filled and refilled. Cuppas were taken on the patio. Participants volunteered for gardening chores simply to spend time outside. Staying in became the new going out. Keeping eyes on the skies proved key. “Having a handkerchief of a garden made me work harder for flyovers”, says Phil Saunders (who, appropriately, currently works on the BTO Garden Birdwatch). Where garden benches provided insufficient purview, attic windows became tower hides. Craig Robson positioned a telescope to look above the rooftops into the
vastness above. His rewards included regular Marsh Harriers, Cranes, Glaucous Gull and Snipe. Stuart White angled his scope at a reserve lake 600m away, enabling him to add Black-necked Grebe, a Norfolk rarity. In year one of the challenge, individual totals ranged from 27 to 93 species. We deduced that the primary factors for a steepling list were location and available time. On the former, proximity to good habitat is key. Keith Langdon may only have a tiny garden, but it backs onto a generously wooded cemetery. His regulars include Green Woodpecker and Treecreeper, species unimaginable for several of us. Will Soar bought his flat solely because of its vista over Earlham Marsh, which adjoins the River Yare: “I barely looked round the flat itself before making an offer”, he recalls. Such real-estate acumen has paid dividends. Will’s garden life list stands at 117. Annual totals in the 90s ensure that he has taken pole position in each year’s challenge. He routinely sees genuinely exciting species for an inland, periurban site. A stack of wildfowl has been complemented by waders including Knot. Loafing gulls have included Glaucous, Caspian and Mediterranean. A Great White Egret winters on his marsh. Migrants following the Yare flyway have included Crane and Goosander. For the rest of us, that’s the stuff of dreams. That said, there’s no benefit in an excitingly located garden if you never spend time there. It may be no coincidence that the homeworkers among us typically garner loftier totals than those working 9 to 5 in an office. Whatever your working pattern, however, Nick Watmough stresses the importance of spending as much time outside as you can – “whether pottering around, drinking a cuppa, processing the moth trap or simply looking upwards”. Dave Andrews added Marsh Harrier while washing the car: “It’s amazing what even a smidgeon of extra time outside can produce”. Alternatively, particularly if you don’t have a garden, it’s worth “keeping windows open so you can locate unusual species on call”, Yoav Perlman suggests. Also important – albeit less than expected – is the quality of your garden itself. An Englishman’s home may be his castle, but sadly no participant enjoys
extensive, bird-rich grounds: we all reside on housing estates or in Victorian terraces. Nevertheless, what you do with your garden helps. “Well-stocked feeders are a must”, says Nick. They certainly worked for Stuart, whose supply of nuts attracted Mealy Redpolls one winter.
Month by month focus
Over the three years of the challenge, we have also learnt when to focus effort – in terms of both time of year and day. January usually starts with a bang, for every species counts afresh. In 2016, Will reached 66 species by 1 February – a total bettered across the whole year by just two other people! Quite by chance, we discovered that mid-march can be exceptional. Dave heard Wigeon fly over one night in 2017 – then Teal. Someone nearby sauntered outside – they heard Wigeon, too. Spreading the word by Whatsapp, many of us rushed outside and were treated to a remarkable nocturnal passage of wildfowl and waders. Exchanging information in real time (“Dave – Oystercatcher coming your way NOW!”… “Got it!”) enabled us to share the experience. The challenge may be a competition, but it is the degree of collaboration and camaraderie engendered that has been particularly heartening. Come 2018, enjoying nocturnal migration became a regular activity, often involving being wrapped in blankets on a patio chair and warmed further by a dram of malt. Always pushing barriers, Dave took things
a step further. Using a microphone and digital recorder, he ‘taped’ overnight calls, then played them back during the day. The results were astonishing – and gave insights into the potential for all of us, if only we were insomniacs. Dave’s most exciting recordings starred Common Scoter, numerous wader and duck species, and (a few weeks later) Ring Ouzel (sadly for Dave, he didn’t hear any ‘in the flesh’ so they are ineligible for his year-list). There were also local movements of which Dave was previously unaware: Little Grebe, Moorhens, Barn and Little Owls. For Keith, what transpired to be routine nocturnal meanderings of Moorhens “were one of the most unexpected things we have learnt”. Each spring produces another rush of new species, with migrants returning from Africa. Late-summer evenings, meanwhile, prove good for passage waders. The year’s other focal point was the visible migration that dominated our lives for a fortnight from the end of October 2017 – with real-time sightings again being shared through Whatsapp. In a single earlymorning hour, Dave counted “477 Redwing, 300 Fieldfare, 16 Chaffinch, nine Brambling and three Hawfinch”. Many of us produced similar totals – or at least until the school run started. (My ‘Hawfinch day’ wasn’t the only time I was ‘vismigging’ while clad only in my underwear…) The challenge has produced some seriously surprising species. A Red-legged Partridge “made an incongruous sight” on Dave Farrow’s garden fence – as had a Firecrest just four days after he moved in. Three of us have heard a Bittern grunting as it flew over at night. A calling Blacktailed Godwit caused the perpetually laidback Robin Chittenden to “leap from my garden hammock quicker than I have ever moved”. Both Stuart and I have been astonished by Kingfishers careering through our garden airspace. Meanwhile, Norwich “proves to be bang en route when the Welney Bewick’s Swans migrate back east in late winter”, says Dougal Mcneill. Two Cranes were tracked between participants’ houses – another instance where collaboration trumped competitiveness. A Firecrest singing one May morning in my garden attracted a mini-twitch. As did Will’s ‘garden’, regularly. Will even twitched it himself once, running back from the far end of Blakeney Point when someone else found a Dunlin there. Another form of surprise relates to unexpectedly difficult species. For Graham Clarke, it is Coal Tit: “one briefly: not before and not since!” My personal bugbear is House Sparrow. Despite two colonies within 100m of home, individuals have only strayed gardenwards on six occasions. Other participants report similar problems – a sign of the times for this Red Listed species? A brilliantly simple idea from a father-tobe has revolutionised the life of Norwich birders. Thanks to the challenge, we feel more attuned to our local area and the seasons. The event couldn’t be more ‘green’ or less stressful. Why not hook up with some local friends and try a garden year-list alongside #My200birdyear? In 2019, Norwich birders will be competing for the fourth consecutive year. We can’t wait.
EACH SPRING PRODUCES ANOTHER RUSH OF NEW SPECIES, WITH MIGRANTS RETURNING FROM AFRICA