Bits of Birdwatching Stuff: The year of oh, you've just missed it mate

Fledgling barn owl, Greater Manchester
(My blog posts sometimes omit birds I've seen due to the need to protect sensitive areas or breeding species.)
(This was late Summer.)

There had to come a time when my post-retirement accumulation of lifers started to slow down and this year seemed to be it. It was bound to happen as recently-added species become regular annual — or even monthly — ticks (great white egret and ring-necked parakeet, for instance) and I can't go hurtling round to out of the way places. This year certainly put last year's bumper tally into perspective. Still, there was plenty about and plenty to see, I visited some new places and got reacquainted with old ones and got a bit of exercise along the way.

It was a year of odd weather: generally mild Winters, an early Spring punctuated by slabs of sullen weather, a bit of scorchio then a slab of dull, wet weather that kept the butterflies and dragonflies at bay, and an Indian Summer before a lot of mild wet grey. It's been a damp year ending very wet. This was reflected in my birdwatching, if not in the birds I found.

The ones that got away

Let's get them out of the way first…

• I dipped on the common rosefinch that was singing just outside Kendal for a couple of weeks. No excuses, I just couldn't find it. Lovely walk, though.

• The marsh warbler singing on the Staffordshire University campus in Stoke disappeared about an hour before I arrived. It's a nice little walk to have in the bag.

• The Baird's sandpiper at Meols might or might not have been one of the birds tooling round in the distance in filthy weather.

• The bee-eater at Withins Reservoir did a flit shortly before I arrived.

• And although it wasn't a lifer I'm still a bit miffed that the long-billed dowitcher that had been showing well for days at Leighton Moss did a runner five minutes before I got into the Eric Morecambe Hide and was never seen again.

Somehow the stonking Autumn for North American passerines in South Wales, Shetland and the Scilly Isles well nigh ignored North West England where even the regular Autumn scarcities were thin on the ground.

This year's bogey birds were common redstarts and spotted flycatchers. I just couldn't connect with them at all. Glossy ibis, red-crested pochards, shrikes and snow geese reminded me that they're scarce birds, I didn't get over to the right places for choughs or red grouse, and I didn't do well for seabirds or owls.

A bad year for…

Another negative is the impact of avian flu on black-headed gull populations. We're not getting the usual crowds on the school playgrounds and the corpse-strewn breeding grounds were heartbreaking.

I do seriously have to mention the state of our railway companies. The random cancellations had a bigger, and more sustained, impact than the strikes. Perhaps the biggest negative of the year was the performance of Transpennine Express which at one point was cancelling train journeys faster than I could spend the compensatory rail vouchers, I think in the end I made £30 profit on trying to get up to Redcar. I'd rather have not had the £30 or the stress and wasted time it paid for. I should also mention Flowery Field Station, which is consistently voted the worst railway station in Greater Manchester. I've often wondered why; going through there it looks just like hundreds of other unstaffed halts around the country. This year I used it a few times in my bid to see the firecrest at Dukinfield Park. My God. It gets my vote.

Adding to the lists

So what of the lifers I did manage to see?

• It took three goes for Transpennine Express to get me to Redcar for the king eider just off the beach, and I only got a distant view of it.

Alpine swift, Elton Reservoir

• I've seen alpine swifts in Italy, the one showing beautifully well at Elton Reservoir was a nice addition to my British list.

• The Kumlein's gull at Widnes was a new taxon for me. It's a subspecies of Iceland gull but given the splits and revisions going on in the taxonomy of large gulls it might become a full armchair tick. It was an interesting bird to see and not one I'm confident I'd identify off my own bat. I'm very grateful to the birders who let me use their telescopes.

• The white-tailed eagle on the Mersey opposite Hale Lighthouse was hard work. I hope I get better views of one in the future.

• I twitched the red-eyed vireo at Bempton and managed to see it twice, once on the way in and again on the way out. A bonny bird though a fidget to try and photograph.

Red-breasted goose, Martin Mere

• I couldn't not try and find the red-breasted goose that spent a bit of time on Banks Marsh and, despite the very gloomy weather, I managed to find it. It was very nice to get a second go at it at Martin Mere in rather more comfortable conditions.

The stats

In the end I managed a year list of 213, which isn't bad for what I felt was hard work at times. The monthly average was 113 so I must have been doing something right and there wasn't a month where I wasn't seeing at least 100 species of birds. I didn't travel quite as extensively as I'd planned, somehow neglecting North Wales and bits of Cheshire and still not getting round to a couple of day trips I've had planned for a couple of years but I've managed to get about a bit.

Cheshire and Wirral 137 species
Cleveland 31
Cumbria 91
Denbighshire 37
Derbyshire 49
Durham 13
Flintshire 28
Greater Manchester 134
Lancashire and North Merseyside 158
Staffordshire 27
Yorkshire 85

The Greater Manchester list stands at 187, the British list at 302 and the life list at 382.

Next year

Again there's the temptation to make the game more complicated but the double target of 200 species a year, 100 species a month is challenging enough to make me shift myself and get out and about without being so irksome I stop enjoying the experience.

When I put king eider on this year's wish list I had an eye on the bird at Redcar last Christmas, adding red-breasted goose to the life list was vanishingly unlikely. The random additions to the life list are part of the fun, I wouldn't have predicted eagles or vireos. So for my predictions for next year I'll keep the hardy annual wish for wryneck, little auk, nightjar and great reed warbler and let's have a guess at long-eared owl and bee-eater. As for an unlikely punt I'll hedge my bets with a red-rumped swallow or a shore lark. Or a vulture.