Small patches don't necessarily mean small rewards

A nationwide birding initiative started this year to spot as many birds as possible, within a 10km radius.  As a group, myself and The Bradburys had already come up with a similar initiative, way back in 2017!  The Bradburys used to birdwatch on the Racecourse and I loved having them there, but they decided to find somewhere closer to home and subsequently moved across to Saxon Mill fields - although they soon found winter birding there quite dull.  At that time I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Racecourse challenges and, with some weird issues beginning to manifest themselves with a patch further afield, I was starting to make connections with local land owners to explore new options

Meadow Pipit by @1stbirdoftheday

. We all really needed to find something to keep ourselves motivated and decided to set ourselves a challenge - to try and see 100 bird species per year on our existing patches within Warwick.  We created a radius limit to just over 2kms from the centre of old Warwick Town.  We are now in our fifth year, have collected a few more local birders along the way to help us with the challenge, and Lizzy has now embraced low carbon birding by walking everywhere.

The issue I had with the Racecourse was that it was heavily disturbed taking a full morning to cover every single part of it and the other patch was no longer a pleasure to share with others and their attitudes.   So, in 2019, I started to concentrate on a new area.  This new patch was small, so could be done thoroughly within an hour and better still, I was the only who birded the area and it isn’t that disturbed.  Small, however, does not necessarily mean less birds and I had soon amassed a total of 110 bird species on there. Besides the birds I have also enjoyed sharing the area with otters, foxes, roe deer, muntjac, bank voles and grass snakes, all within a stone's throw from the centre of town.

Whinchat by @1stbirdoftheday

Even recently, during a yellow warning of wind from the Met office, a visit gave me chiffchaff, marsh tit and a green sandpiper.

Birding such a small patch has given me the joy of seeing a surfacing otter only 4 feet away, a muntjac so intent on feeding that it didn’t  notice me, three kingfishers buzzing one another, a green sandpiper bobbing away at the water’s edge and countless other experiences from the exciting to the more mundane.   Don’t get me wrong, I will have days that yield nothing at all but, most of the time, there is something that may spark my interest.   While small has not brought me a huge site list, social media likes or recognition in whatever birding scene there is in Warwickshire (with my name in black and white on county reports or slaps on the back for finding something rare - not that I care about either anyway), it has given rewards far greater and more important to me...  

It has given me the incentive to get up and out early, it has helped with my mental health, it has given me new “true” lifelong friends (instead of superficial social media acquaintances), it has given me the joy of sharing my enthusiasm with others and seeing their faces light up as they see something new.  It has also given me fond memories often shared with others from jokes about Chaffinches to comments that a particular bird call reminds a friend of me, because I taught them to identify it.  Anyway, I need to finish this now as I have to be out the door to meet that good friend to go walk on that small patch of wildness in Warwick.

RH

Please don't laugh at our rarities...!

We had a few new additions to our list this week including chiffchaff, woodcock and lesser redpoll - birds we would expect each year.  However, some birds that in many places are an every day sighting, really get the pulses racing here in Warwick...

Tufted duck

Spotted by Rick, this little beauty is the first tuftie to be recorded in St Nicholas Park for 6 years! 

photo by Rick Thompson

Apparently, it is the UK's most common diving duck and there's even more of them in the UK in Winter as they travel here from Iceland and Northern Europe.  They just seem to choose not to come to the centre of Warwick!  

It isn't just us, though.  It does make me feel a little better to know that a tufted duck seen on Bardsey Island in May 2019 was only the 35th record since records began back in the 1950s! (George Dunbar, Birdguides)

Red Kite

This was spotted by Chris over Warwick on the 6th Feb, with another sighting (probably the same bird) by James in Leamington, on the 11th. 

Following the first reintroduction of red kites in the Chilterns in 1989, and further introductions in other areas, they have spread far and wide...but not quite reached Warwick yet.  There is a pair in the village of Barford, just down the road, and it may be one of these that we see popping into town on the odd occasion (although Warwick Castle does have a red kite display as part of their falconry show, so I suppose it could have been one of theirs).  

Hopefully we'll start to see the real deal more regularly as the numbers of this majestic bird continue to rise and disperse further.

Egyptian goose

A first for me in Warwick, this pair were canoodling on a temporary flash at the Saxon Mill fields this morning.  An invasive species, it is illegal to keep, breed or release them, but they are common in Norfolk and around Greater London and, while it was an absolute BOOOM moment for me, they are considered a real pest in some places.  I remember talking to someone at Rutland Water in early Spring some years ago.  He didn't love them at all, saying that it was a real race for the Rutland ospreys to return quickly before the Egyptian geese started to nest on their platforms!

photo by Lizzy Bradbury

So, our list now stands at 75 so far for the year.  Only 25 more species to go to reach our target and, with Spring on the way, we have every chance of hitting it 😊.   Whether that will be through spotting everyday species, ones that are scarce for us or maybe...just maybe...a real rarity, is yet to be discovered!

Lizzy