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Top of the Flops 2019

Top of the Flops 2019


The votes are in and have been counted and independently verified so here we go with the annual review of my birding year.

Dip of the year

So where better to start than with the most eagerly awaited award. Yet again this year there were so many fantastic entries. Surely an overnight stay in Cornwall and then missing the Brown Booby by one day can’t be beaten. No? While perhaps another overnight stay in Yorkshire only to discover that the supposed Lesser Kestrel was (or was not!) a common Kestrel must trump the Brown Booby. No there is one dip that is simple head and shoulders above all else. A round trip of some one thousand three hundred miles and 8 nights away from home in the Outer Hebrides looking for Pom and Long-tailed Skuas. In Jeremy’s unforgettable words before we left – “there was no Skua passage last year so there is bound to be one this year”. Cue endless hours staring out at a grey Hebridean sea in the freezing cold– result – ZERO Skuas!

The Lord Snowdon one pixel photograph award

Again so many truly terrible pictures to choose from but after much consideration the award goes to this ten pixel picture of, you are just going to have to take my word for this, a Collared Pratincole. Having spent some hours in the hide at the national wetlands centre with many other forlorn birders there was a shout of there it is flying left! Everybody else had a brief view of the bird in flight except nobby no friends who missed it. Cue kicking the scope all around the hide and stamping off in a huff only to discover an hour later that it had returned. Thank god I decided to go back or else I would have missed getting this truly incredible photograph!



Now to the slightly less serious awards!

Photograph of the year

This was a tough one and, in the end, I decided to split this into two separate awards for the UK and Kenya.

For the UK I’ve decided to go for this picture of a Redstart taken in Wales on the 18thJune. I’ve tried many times and failed to get a half decent photograph of this lovely summer visitor but on this occasion two hours laying in damp soggy moss paid off!



For Kenya I've gone for something slightly different with this portrait of a White-browed Coucal taken in the Rift Valley. I love the fractal detail of the neck feathers and the penetrating stare of the blood red eye.




Bird of the year

I’m again going to split this into UK and Kenya. For the UK I’m not going for the rarest bird, the Cornwall Paddyfield Pipit, just because there is a lingering question mark over its provenance. I’m going to go for the unusually showy Corncrake that we saw on North Ulst. Having such a prolonged close encounter with such a sulky bird which is often heard and seldom seen was truly special.



For Kenya I have to go with a bird that I have always wanted to see, the strange and downright weird secretary bird.




I’ve had a really wonderful years birding this year adding 220 birds to my world list. If 2020 is only half as good I would be delighted. So it just remains for me to wish my many thousands (sic!) of followers a prosperous and very bird filled new year!




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