It's a grim sort of a day and I didn't feel like going for a walk so I thought I'd revisit my birdwatching stats. I'm often asked why I don't put things away properly at home and the honest answer is that I want to be able to find them. I put some notebooks away safe fifteen years ago which is why I have stats for only twenty-nine of the past thirty-six years entered into BirdTrack, which is what I'm using for the number-crunching.
A long while back I listed the places where I'd seen the most species of birds. This is an update (with the caveat about the missing notebooks):
- Martin Mere 158 species
- Leighton Moss 137
- Marshside 119
- Dawlish Warren 116
- Pennington Flash 113
- Frodsham Marsh 109
- Crossens Marsh 108
- Elton Reservoir 108
- Seaforth Nature Reserve 98
- Crosby Marine Lake 96
- Leasowe Lighthouse 96
- Bowling Green Marsh 91
- Lunt Meadows 90
- Leighton Moss coastal pools 88
- New Lane 87
- Red Cat Lane, Burscough 87
- West Kirby 86
- Little Woolden Moss 84
- Carrington Moss 83
- Chat Moss 79
- Hollingworth Lake 78
- Topsham 78
- Hodbarrow 77
- Red Rocks, Hoylake 76
All told, there are seventy-two places where I've recorded more than fifty species. And a *lot* of places I've visited less than a handful of times with forty-odd species recorded. Which is a testament not to my birdwatching skills but to the richness of these places. Add to these those sites which don't host a huge variety of species but have huge numbers of what there is and those places with very specialized habitats, given enough time and opportunity there's plenty about to see if the wind's in your favour.
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| Mediterranean gulls, Martin Mere |
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