No pictures for this one unlike the moth one!
I’m not really a massive birder. Not compared to a lot of other birders at least. I don’t twitch (ie: chase after rarities to tick that species off a list); i’m more interested in native breeding and over-wintering birds, I don’t actively chase lists, I hate early mornings, and I don’t have a regular patch (a local place where you go once or twice a week). OK the last one isn’t strictly true, I have a couple of places I go near me but I’m finding I go sporadically rather than every week.
On the last point, I’m finding I go to Jackson’s Brickworks (see a previous post) in the spring and summer, and I’m going to another patch, Poynton Pool/Park, in the autumn and winter. There is no logic to this! Also the other thing preventing me from having a bona fide patch is work, which is currently taking me all around the country, quite literally from the Hebrides to the Isles of Scilly.
Anyway despite all this I’ve managed to see more birds this year than in any other year, and I’ve managed to get beyond 200 species seen in the UK in my lifetime. This year I saw 168 species of bird in the UK, which beats the previous total of 147 set in 2010, If I were to include international birds (or basically Maltese birds!) the total is 187, not bad for someone who is not actively chasing numbers! For anyone interested the 200th UK bird was a Storm Petrel Hydrobates pelagicus.
2015 was the year of the Eagle for me. Before this year I hadn’t seen any of the two species of native UK eagle. Now I’ve seen both. My first encounter happened on a small Scottish island (nameless at the moment!) in September. I had been dropped onto this island along with a few others to survey the island for winter conservation work, within 100 metres of the landing point a huge bird took off from behind a knoll and headed towards the sea, I saw the staring eyes quite clearly. This was a White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla. Not, as many a first encounter have been, a spec, a maybe, a fleeting glimpse, but a full on show, it was wonderful. In November, on the same Scottish island I saw my first Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos. This was more standard first glimpse, it hung around for a long time but it involved frantic photos and flicking through ID books to confirm it (Golden Eagles and juvenile White-tails – whose tails aren’t that white, can be difficult to tell apart sometimes).
Added to these UK encounters were my Maltese eagle encounters. Now I’ve not written about my Maltese adventures before on this blog, but I go there every autumn to monitor bird migration and to also monitor illegal poaching which is notorious on the island (read this http://birdlifemalta.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-impacts-of-raptor-camp.html a blog I wrote in 2013 for Birdlife Malta for more of an idea). Anyway, my final day in Malta this autumn provided not one, but two species of eagle to monitor and protect from the hunters. These species were Short-toed Eagle Circaetus gallicus and Lesser Spotted Eagle Aquila pomarina. Again like my Scottish Golden Eagle encounter these were fleeting but in this case the experience was more frantic and at times worrying. To keep it short, the birds were circling to roost near a well known bird sanctuary, but in order to get there they had to fly over the heads of any prospective poacher in the area (and there are a lot). The Lesser Spotted Eagle (LSE) in particular would make for a tempting prize to any illegal poacher. I was the last person to see the LSE before it went to roost in the gloom surrounding the bird santuary (I hope it went into the sanctuary, last I saw it was heading to an area slightly away from it). I still don’t know the fate of these two birds, a night-time watch was established but I left the island before I knew the result of the all night watch.
Just a snap-shot really of my birding year. It was a good birding year an I hope 2016 will equal it (my 2016 list currently stands at 10 bird species! woo go me!).
Grass-roots Wildlife 