Half-year review

Pied wagtail. Meols

After the cold and flooding of the beginning of the year an early Spring became an early Summer leading to official mutterings of drought in May. Not knowing when the spell might end I threw myself into taking advantage of the fine weather and by the predictably rainy late May bank holiday and the onset of a more unsettled June I was fair wore out. The list of neglected places looks similar to last year. The competition between new sites visited and sites yet to be visited was, and is, fierce and unrelenting, and the less said about the myriad speculative coo, I wonder where that goes the better. Plenty of them will be explored in time, I expect, I don't intend putting myself under any pressure about it.

The birding has been steady. It was a very quiet Spring for rarities but there was a steady stream of the regular scarcities though there are still a few notable gaps. January added shore lark to the life list, June added woodchat shrike. In between the bookends April saw an influx of migrants, June saw an explosion of young birds despite the cooler, wetter weather. The woodchat shrike brought my Cheshire &Wirral list to 200, I've added red kite and cuckoo to that list since then. (I don't keep an active C&W list, I'd just realised I must be close to the milestone so I did a bit of number-crunching. I do keep an active Greater Manchester list and it's not running far behind. They both lag well behind Lancashire & North Merseyside.)

Short-eared owl, Chat Moss 

I feel that the year list is light on geese and waders but when I actually look at it, well no it isn't. I think that impression reflects my experience of the weather rather than the birdwatching. The unseasonal weather is probably also why I've not seen fieldfares or redpolls in Greater Manchester yet this year.

The year list stands at 194.

Half-year totals of recorded species by BTO recording area:

• Cheshire and Wirral 110
• Cumbria 84
• Denbighshire 32
• Derbyshire 52
• Flintshire 29
• Greater Manchester 119
• Lancashire and North Merseyside 147
• Staffordshire 10
• Yorkshire 76

Gadwall, Marshside

I'll try to use the post-breeding lull to catch up with places but as always, anything can happen in the next half year.

Sedge warbler, Marshside

Shelduck and duckling, Woolston Ees