Thirdly review

Mallard and ducklings, Marshside

I had meant to do a quarterly review at the end of March but I forgot so I'll do a thirdly review to make up for it.

The first thing to say about 2023 is that as far as the year list is concerned it started more slowly than 2022 despite my making roughly the same effort to get about. I'm still very confident of hitting the 200 target for the year list, at the end of April it's reached 164 (this time last year it had hit 175 but had predictably peaked and there wasn't a month thereafter where I was adding double figures to the total). 

The year list 01/01/2023 — 30/04/2023
That big step in mid-January was this year's first visit to Southport, I usually try to fit it in in the first week.

The year list 01/01/2022 — 30/04/2022

The main differences are that last year I got a couple of East coast trips out and added rocky shore specialities like fulmars, shags and auks, had been lucky with owls and geese and had a surge of migrants in mid-April; this year it took three goes to Redcar for the king eider and the other trip out of the Northwest was to North Wales with both trips providing a selection of sandy beach and mussel bed specialists, and most of the migrants have rolled in later this year.

Totals for the recording areas so far:

• Greater Manchester 103
• Lancashire and North Merseyside 117
• Cheshire and Wirral 113
• Cumbria 48
• Derbyshire 29
• Yorkshire 46
• Cleveland 31
• Durham 13
• Denbighshire 37
• Flintshire 28

The important thing is that I'm getting out and about and keeping eyes and ears open for what's around. It should be an interesting year.

Marsh harrier, Leighton Moss