A Red letter bird.

My local patch list is kept on a colour coded excel spreadsheet. The species are listed down the left hand column and the years are horizontally along the top. I've described it on here before, so to get the full boredom feel, see link. 

This makes it easy to monitor the species, what is missing for a given year etc. The exciting bit (well ok, the exciting bit for me) is to see how many 'red' species turn up in a year. These are species recorded on 3 or less years since recording began in 2009. The birds might not be rare on your patch or on a national or even county level, but on mine they make the heart skip a beat.

On Tuesday one such species turned up for the 2022 list, my first 'reddity' of the year.

At lunchtime I was out taking Peggy for her walk. The coast seemed quite busy with a  layby full of cars, so we headed off down the 'Teepee Track'. It is a bridle path that runs south from Seahouses Farm where it passes the now defunct site of a reconstructed neolithic hut. It's a mostly bird barren site apart from a stubble field that holds a few finches and larks and it was while scanning for these, the birding took a turn for the better...

We were stood on the old teepee site as I scanned north west across the field hoping for a twite or lapland bunting or even a Meadow Pipit that has not shown so far this year, when, into my binocular view , dashed a direct, low flying, raptor. The first thought was female Sparrowhawk but it looked odd, darker, when it turned to reveal a massive square white rump - a ringtail Hen Harrier!

On this site, Hen Harrier is a knee trembling rarity with only one previous record from 2010 during that hard winter. Concentrating, I leaned on the fence to get the best possible steady views of the bird, thinking it was just passing through. Luckily for me, it was in hunting mode and began quartering the stubble, hovering, sometimes with legs dangling before changing direction and taking another line. It was flushing larks and linnets all over. The sun was behind me, lighting the harrier beautifully as it floated and pirouetted around the field for about 10 minutes. Once it even landed for a look around before getting back up and quartering its way to the north and off towards our village. I wonder if it went over our garden?

Without a camera, I concentrated as much as possible so I could do this sketch as soon as I got back in to the house...

What a great 'red box' bird for my Local Patch year list... 

 

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....