Baggins on the Loose

Tuesday 8 January 2013

York area Bird Race

Ok now here's a thing that probably only birdwatchers do ... count the number of bird species in a give area on a given day and turn it into a competition! In the York recording area (appx 15 square miles around the city) its held on Jan 6th and called the Michale Clegg Memorial bird race - in memory of a notable York ornithologist.

More or less true to form I'd forgotten it was on but I was out and about and just tallied my list at 64, with no real surprises - Snipe, Whooper Swan, Siskin, Willow Tit and Pintail being the highlights. Next year maybe, if I'm around.

A team of local birders led by Tim Jones won this year's competition with a total of 98 species, breaking the record for the area by some margin - here's his brief report posted on the York Ornithological Forum

Well done lads!!

Full days birding today in the area amassing a grand total of 98, the route and highlights being;

a Grey Wagtail at Ouse Bridge in town
Buttercrambe with highlights being Green Woodpecker, Crossbill, Woodcock, Jay, Nuthatch
Castle Howard saw Scaup, Shoveler and Goldeneye
Strensall to get Stonechat with the big bonus of the day being an adult female Hen Harrier that hunted over the northern area of the common in the process flushing several Snipe
Rufforth Airfield getting 1w and 2w Lesser black-backed Gulls
Askham Bog getting Willow Tit
Driving over the A64 managed to see c10 Goosander on Middlethorpe Ings
Heslington East came up trumps again with a bonus Green Sandpiper, Kingfisher and Jack Snipe
Tillmire Area with a single Mealy Redpoll in with a large flock of Lessers, Little Owl, Grey Partidge
Thorganby got Shelduck, Whooper and a sad lack of the previously reported Waxwings
North Duffield area got Corn Bunting (to equal previous record of 90) then Golden Plover (to beat the record!) also Peregrine but missed Pink foot and Brambling
Awesome Aughton saw a Marsh Harrier put up a large mixed wader flock which contained Ruff, Dunlin and Redshank to put us on 96!
Round the corner to Ellerton with a single Bewick's
Quick race to Melbourne and managed our final species of the day, Little Grebe

A real top quality day showing that maybe it is indeed possible to get 100 in a day.

To put this in perspective other teams in Yorkshire managed;

Scarborough- 92

Barnsley-86 (both of which beat us last year)

Fairburn- 70

Just goes to show just how good the York Area is!

Like Andalucia?

Cracking site / forum here if, like me, you're partial to a taste of Southern Spain. It's called the Andalucia Bird Society. Click here to view the site

For my money Andalucia is by far the best area of Spain and not just for birding, with its magnificent scenery, year round climate and relative absence of heavy tourism, its a place well worth spending some time exploring .... just as me 'n me old mucker Mark have done dozens of times now and it's never failed to disappoint. Best time to go is anywhere between March and early May and anything can turn up on passage. One of these days I'll get around to properly sorting all my Andalucia records and there are many many highlights but a few stand out ..... Golden Orioles making landfall and flying through the bushes at dawn, my first ever Roller perched on top of a prickly pear by the roadside, a displaying Imperial Eagle at Bonanza, a Rock Sparrow singing right above our tents in the Rhonda Valley and just the sheer number of times we witnessed masses of raptors migrating North over the Straights of Gibralter ...... wetted your appetite?

This Andalucia Bird Society site has certainly given me some new ideas for places previously unvisited and contains a wealth of birding and non birding info on the area, it even has a useful guide to separating Lesser and Common Kestrel (something I've never quite mastered!) .... well worth checking out my friends!

Self indulgent sample of Andalucian birds (all pics from the above site)