Dark Days Ahead

After catching up with all the Xmas match stats, I've thrown on my dressing gown and stumbled around the patch four times so far this year. All fairly mediocre until today when four Bullfinches lifted the spirits (just one previous patch record). Nice though this is, I fear that 2013 will be a struggle. Despite scoring <100% in 2012, the three year average had gone up by three whole species, thanks to a dismal year list in 2009 now falling off the end of the rolling three year period. So the new target, 129, is four more than the 2012 total and two more even than the 2011 silver medal position total.

There was just one more addition to 2012 that I have not declared previously - a mighty fine pair of Gadwall on the sea way back at the end of November (again just one previous record). This put the total onto 125 species (=99.21%) and so it stayed to the year end.

By way of post-mortem of 2012, there was just one clanging omission from the list that had appeared in each of the previous four years at least; Chiffchaff FFS. Just one patch tick, too; Tree Pipit. The magic 200 for the patch seems a long way off.....

Statto

Good day for a long walk

Enjoyed a good walk around Old Porty. I was mainly picking up bread and butter species, but siskin can be tricky and I had two flocks on 5th and 6th. The sea is pretty dead, but an early kittiwake and fulmar was useful. The star birds were four common crossbills flying through - I have no idea where from or where to apart from on my patch list!

New Year birding in Collieston

A few reasonable patch birds got the year going, 3 Short-eared Owls round by the Sand Loch and Forvie Centre, the male Hen Harrier still knocking around and some Common Scoter on the sea. Other good birds for the eventual total were Great Spotted Woodpecker and Coal Tit, though both of these remain frequent sightings around the village just now.
Still to calculate the  year's target average...(i.e work out my final total for last year!)

Happy New Year to you all!

Kick start the cycle

First siskin of the season on the peanut feeder this morning (very dodgy photo below) was a good start, and the catalyst for a quick cycle around the north west corner of the patch to check out the lake. It started badly when the chain fell off a few hundred yards from home... but the trusty Swiss Army Knife soon had me back on track.

Dodgy siskin photo anyone?

I was fully expecting to start racking up the year ticks right off the bat... but it was deathly quiet out on the patch. Things weren't helped by the January West Cork gloom, and it wasn't until I got down to the lake and bagged teal, mallard and snipe that things started to pick up a bit. Chough and treecreeper soon joined the party, swiftly followed by a glorious male bullfinch and a posse of long tailed tits. 

On the back leg and a couple of cormorants and a moorhen raised the tally a tad higher. No herons, no raptors, no tufties, but not a bad hour on the bike, all things considered... and a bit of exercise to boot... bonus!

Slow, with minor Owl compensation

Almost nothing unexpected in almost 9 hours on the patch on the 1st. A real slog, but a bonus Little Owl at last knockings. 57 species, a little over 50%, and five birds down on last year already. So many people working my patch these days that I'm in last place there too. Have not picked up binoculars since - curse this damn recession and my non-millionaire status!

Derek

Off to a standing start

Well, I finally succumbed to pressure and agreed to enlist with the motley crew here for the "original" (and still the... err... best?) Patch Challenge, pretenders and upstarts be damned.

So naturally dawn on the first of January saw me... well, still in bed actually.

In fact, as I write this I still haven't ventured outside the front gate (or the back gate, come to that) of The Towers. Some say it's apathy, but I blame the man flu that's doing the rounds here in the arse end of Ireland. Ask Seppy about it if you don't believe me.

Not to worry... so far in/from the garden have picked off 29 species over the last couple of days... an immacculate grey wag among the most handsome of specimens, and a fly over raven, always nice to see. Plenty more to come I suspect, and who knows, one of these days I might even wander around the patch proper.

The great thing about a nice little nondescript inland patch like mine is that, because the average tally is so much lower than coastal hot-spots (like Galley, for instance), my lazy 29 puts me somewhere north of 35% if I've done the maths right. Sometimes it pays to be a "lowlisting tart", as Seppy puts it so eloquently.

Onwards and... well, onwards anyway!

Missed some, scored some...

Although way off the leader board a good years patch birding.  Finishing the year with a total of 160 species and 103.23%.   A much improved performance from 2011 with only 142 species.

However, if only… If only I’d seen everything!  Now that would be something. 

The ones that got away: 

Brent goose (very tricky for the patch),

Wood sandpiper (should be annual)

Long-tailed skua (would have been nice)

Med gull (would have been nicer)

Sab’s gull (bugger)

Glauc gull (not sure how I missed one)

Tree pipit (Scarce but annual)

Yellow wag’ (one a year)

Black redstart (They are annual but I always miss them)

Mistle thrush (Scarce but annual)

Grasshopper warbler (but not to worry)

Icterine warbler (damn missed it)

Lesser whitethroat (how did I miss one)

Spot fly (doh!!!)

Red-breated fly (damn)

Snow bunt (almost as bad as missing a spot fly)

That’s at least 16 species known to have been on patch.  A total of at least 176 species and 113%!!!  That would have done it…

But alas not.

Still there were some good ones along the way:

Bean goose, hobby, Rosefinch, Marsh warbler, Cranes x 2, Pecs x 3, yellow-browed warbler (a few) a couple of little bunts, a hawfinch and of course the PG Tips.  …

Now that’s not bad for a patch in one year!

Bring on 2013

Happy Days

Bushveld