Who came first, the patch or the list?

 In light of the Birdguides / Birdwatch magazine promotion of a greener, more local type of birding lots of birders on social media are coming around to the idea. One of the best things I see in the 'new dawn' is the lack of emphasis on list keeping. There is more a focus on the positive experiences gained from this type of back to basics birding with prizes for things like best bird in a local context etc.

My next thoughts are difficult to express clearly but there are definitely a few things not right in the way many birders view this local patch challenge. Well, in my humble opinion anyway. There are no rules so there cant be mistakes but somethings aren't 'in keeping' I don't think?

Firstly it seems that the term local patch, to many, actually refers to the nearest birding hot spot to home. This may be 1 mile or 20 miles it doesn't seem to matter. People will happily pass quite good areas, ironically in their car, to get to the nearest Titchwell, Spurn or other well birded site. I can see this for urban residents who are in the middle of some conurbation but many aren't . Again it's down to personal choice I suppose.

One other thing (sounding like Columbo) is how a patch is defined. This is maybe my biggest OCD type niggle. 

For me, when selecting a patch I'd pick an area of workable size that might have potential and is under watched or rarely watched at all. Then define the boundaries of the area. Once done you can work out routes, watch points, geographical and habitat features that might be productive. Lastly do some research into what, if anything, has been already recorded there, and away you go. In this, your new place, you visit regularly to document the ornithological comings and goings over the seasons and you will end up with a record of the species that use your area. 

Seems straight forward, yes?    

Well no apparently its not.

What appears to be the fashion is to take the whole British List or at least your County List and pull and stretch your patch to take in every possible species. 

Can you see the difference? One begins with an area, the other begins with the list. 

Birders love to say 'Ooh I will just move that boundary up to that wood so I should get Tawny owl, Jay and Nuthatch that I'll not get on the beach'  or 'if I just make my patch a 10 miles radius instead of 3 miles it will reach Blacktoft' or where ever. 

Of course you won't get every bird in your whole vicinity in one year but that's not the point. If you do get one of those birds like those above, it will be all the more worth while!

Some patches end up looking like multi-legged starfish stretched to this place for one species and that place for another. Is that really how patching works? What if we all just went to the same county hotspot?  

I think this is how some fall by the wayside by May. They've run out of interest having seen most of whats possible, the impossible is a bit harder to come by, leaving half a year with little to hope for. They've already had the Nuthatch in February that might have been a mega out of context in August. 

These massively stretched 'patches' are not local patches. Its more like county listing.

Or maybe its just me... 

What ever method you use, be it starfish, 20 miles drive to it or your garden, good luck in 2022. Try not to abandon ship when a Blyth's Reed turns up in someone else's spot ... 😉  

Stewchat's Sketchbook Hootenanny 2020

We bloggers like an end of year round up don't we. Writing this in mid December my family is one of the lucky ones and I hope yours is too. 70,000 other households are not so fortunate, so while our interests seem frivolous at this time, please try to spare a thought for others who didn't have a good Christmas this year and join me in wishing them all the very best for 2021. Who knows what that will bring? 

In Northumberland, this has been a vintage birding year that may not be beaten for a long time so I think it deserves a recap.

January.

Little did we know what the year had in store for us back then. Covid-19 was a new word that had something to do with China. 

What did I do this month? Very little as it happens so its best to move on.

February.

The weather was generally poor with stormy, wet days for weeks on end. One trip started a good birding year when we found a lone Tundra Bean Goose in a stubble full of larks and linnets near Warkworth.

March

The biggest change of the year came when we were told to work from home from the 20th, and I still am. In April my work colleagues ran a sweep to see when we would be back in the office. I guessed 11th May. No one said March 2021.

Bird highlight was a White tailed Eagle, free from accoutrements, viewed for 30 seconds as it glided without a wing beat low over my house and away west on 31st. A great Northumberland and Garden addition.

April

Into Lockdown proper when we only left the house to shop for essentials. Well, we did, others carried on regardless.

This months wildlife highlight wasn't avian, no, a small 'hoverfly' seen very briefly in late March turned out to be a Hairy footed Flower Bee. A first for me and the beginning of daily April visits by these delightful little creatures. They are new to Northumberland recently so to find some in my garden was as good as a Sea Eagle.

May

On the 12th my second patch Golden Oriole was singing for 15 minutes in the arboretum. Despite trying to follow the song, it remained one tree away all the time until singing stopped without a sighting.

After a 2019 blank it was nice to find 2 Spotted Flycatchers on on 23rd and on 26th an incongruous Reed Warbler was singing from our garden hedge for a short while. Finally on 31st a Red tailed Cuckoo Bumblebee was a new one for me again in the garden.

 June

Thankfully lockdown restrictions had been eased in time for a twitch all of 30 miles north to see Northumberland's first Asian Desert Warbler on Holy Island. My second after one at Flamborough 29 years previously.

July

There is only one top spot in July and that goes to Sooty Tern, my absolute bird of the year 2020. After missing its coastal trek in 2019, I hoped for a second chance and even in my dreams I couldn't have hoped for better than the views it gave on the 29th when it spent the afternoon only 300 mtrs from my house. Priceless.

August

Autumn kicks in properly now but we didn't dare to hope it would be as good as it was. Only 10 days after the tern, we found our own rarity along the road at Boulmer, a spanking summer plumaged Pacific Golden Plover. What a bird. This stunner knocked a good passage of Long tailed Skuas on patch into runner up place with 5 - 9 birds seen on the 17th alone. These and a Great Shearwater on 29th could have easily taken top slot in any other year locally. The Hooded Crow became a village resident. A couple of good moths arrived on 4th with Common Emerald and Southern Wainscot both new to VC68.

 

September

The excitement continued with some good seawatching - 16th an adult Sabine's Gull and 7 Pochards , 17th Buff breasted Sandpiper at Boulmer, 21st 2 Lapland Buntings at Boulmer along with Short eared Owl, Curlew Sandpiper and Little Stint, 26th 700 Sooty Shearwaters N at Cullernose plus Storm Petrel on 27th when the first of the seasons Yellow browed Warblers appeared in my garden.

Inverts are being routinely ignored in this pandemonium but Clay-Triple Lines was new to my garden and VC68.

October

Can things get any better? Of course they can!

On the 3rd a Two barred Greenish Warbler gave fleeting but decent views at Budle Bay, 3 Yellow browed Warblers were in my garden and a male Bluethroat was at Boulmer. The Bluethroat was joined on the 5th by a Great Grey Shrike. On 8th a hand netted Convolvulous Hawk-moth at our garden nicotianas was new for the site. On 15th another UK and county tick came in the form of a Brown Shrike on Holy Island where it was accompanied by a Bluetail, Dusky and Pallas's Warblers that I didnt have time to check out. On 18th a female Desert Wheatear was a welcome self find at Boulmer. Phew.

November

Surely that's autumn done with? No, on 11th a Dusky Warbler was at Boulmer and on 19th a Buff-bellied Pipit was my last of 4 UK lifers and 6 Northumberland ticks this year.

December

A final flurry with a  nice Grey Phalarope on the sea off Cullernose on the 5th.

This ended an amazing year for birding locally, breaking my Howick / Craster local patch year list record of 163 set in 2019 with an excellent 166 species. 

I had 3 new species for the area, White tailed Eagle, Grey Phalarope and Sooty Tern with other patch rarities - Pochard ( the third year out of 11 and the first since 2014), Black tailed Godwit ( 2nd year, last 2012), Sabine's Gull ( 3rd year, last 2019), Storm Petrel (2nd year, last 2011), Great Shearwater (2nd year, last 2017), Balearic Shearwater ( 2nd year, last 2011), Golden Oriole ( 2nd, last 2009), Hooded Crow ( 2nd , last 2019), Reed Warbler ( 2nd, last 2016),

Apart from trips to Holy Island, Budle Bay and Amble for new Northumberland birds or lifers, all birds were local patch stars. My six county ticks are - White tailed Eagle, Asian Desert Warbler, Sooty Tern, Two-barred Greenish Warbler, Brown Shrike and Buff-bellied Pipit making my Northumberland list 353 species.

Happy New Year all, stay safe. Here's to an even better 2021. 

The sad side of Local Patch Listing.

 I keep a colour coded spreadsheet of the birds on my Local Patch, Howick / Craster. I have Boulmer separately but might create a 'uber patch' next year copying my fellow blogger Steve Gale who has a similar set up in Surrey.   

As you can see above, the colour codes look like this. Green is a common or regular species seen in at least 10 out of the last 12 years, Orange species are Uncommon seen in 6 - 9 years, Blue are Scarce seen in 4 - 5 years  and Red are Rare birds on the patch being seen in only 1 - 3 years out of the last 12.

The lemon filling are birds on my garden list.

Using this record, I am looking at how the rest of 2020 will pan out. If I have a fair wind I could break last years record total of 163 species. Todate ( the pic above is out of date) I am on 161 species this year only needing another 3 to make it the best. Out of the species in the Green and Orange categories I am missing 6 possibles. They are Gadwall, Little Auk, Black throated Diver, Waxwing, Twite and Snow Bunting. Hopefully I can get three of those and maybe jam in on a rarer species too if I am lucky....fingers crossed.

Sorry to have bored you with my anorak tendencies....

MY List.

Bird listing has always been a bit of a debating topic between birders of all generations. Now I see that there are some big changes coming to the British list in 2018 where some species such as Common and Lesser Redpolls ( that I can identify) will be lumped together and others such as Isabelline type Shrikes ( that I can't identify) will be split into separate species.

This kind of reorder happens ever more regularly these days. What ever happened to the good old Professor Voous order? It served us well for many years. This is where the issues begin I think. It is up to scientists and geneticists to decide on what is a species and what isn't and how those species all fit into the grand order of things. That's a good thing, I mean after all, the science has to be there so internationally those decision makers in power will know whats what.

But what about Joe Public? Birders like me who just enjoy our natural world for what it is? I love to watch birds both common and rare for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else. I also like to wonder, whimsically, about where they come from, what they do, how they featured in history etc. I never ever wonder if the DNA sequence of a Merlin is closer to a parrot, than a Buzzard! Currently I have Mealy Redpoll and Hudsonian Whimbrel on my list. Should I suddenly erase these and tear the page from the guide because, in the laboratory they no longer exist?

I think its time to rebel and push Clements, Howard and Moore, Sangster and the rest to one side and have a look at a list that suits my own needs. I can leave the science to the professionals to sort out.

Basically, do I need to worry whether the birds I watch are even different species at all? I like to look for sub species such as Dark bellied Brents, Scandinavian Rock Pipits, Blue headed Wagtails and Northern Bullfinches, but these are deemed untickable by the powers that be. You can argue that we don't need a list at all, but most birders do keep them, and they are a good way to guide our birding plans, other wise we might as well just be out looking at the same Robin everyday rather than revelling in the variety on offer.

What I think I'll do from now is to record all field identifiable forms, in an order that I recognise. If there are any competitions in the offing such as Patch Challenge, Bird Races, County Listing etc, it will be easy just to conform to the standard like everyone else, but in my own world, falcons will be with raptors, divers will come first, there will be no such thing as Lapland Longspurs, and I might even add another Brent Goose to my list...

Pale bellied Brent Goose. The commonest of the Brents in Northumberland. One of only two Brents that I've seen ( Black Brant might appear one day) 

Today this is an Isabelline Shrike. In 2018 I'll have no idea what it is, thanks to science.