Skip to main content

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!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albert the Albatross

  What is more improbable -   a)     England’ football team    beating Germany in the knockout stages of a major competition   b)     Seeing an Albatross in England   Actually the answer is a) because it has not happened since 1966 rather than b) as Albert the Albatross, as he is affectionally known, has made a number of passing visits to the UK since 1967!   On Monday evening reports started to emerge of Albert associating with the Gannet colony at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, almost one year after his    last brief visit to the same site. During the intervening period there have been a number of sightings of Albert across Europe, particularly from the Baltic Sea where he appears to have spent much of the last 12 months. In fact there were reports that he had been attacked and killed in the area by two eagles.    Reports of his death were clearly greatly exaggerated!   The Black-browed Albatross is circumpolar in the southern oceans but very rarely seen above the equator. If I t
2 comments
Read more

The Hawfinches of the Forest of Dean

   Hawfinch - Forest of Dean, winter 2017 A highlight of my winter birding is my annual trip to the Forest of Dean to see Hawfinches. I was unable to go last year due to the post-Christmas lockdown so this year’s visit was even more richly anticipated than normal.   Parkend in the Forest of Dean is my usual chosen location for watching Hawfinches. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. I must also say that,  after a number of quite strenuous twitches recently, I was also looking forward to a much more leisurely birding session!   The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around.    Records indicate that the Hawfinch was a very rare
2 comments
Read more

Perseverance or sheer stupidly? – The Belted Kingfisher nailed at the 4th attempt!

         Belted Kingfisher I have had three failed attempts, or dips as birders call them, to see the Lancashire Belted Kingfisher over the last few weeks, including two harrowing encounters with the slope of death, see here .     So when the bird was relocated a few miles away from its original location in an altogether less challenging spot I was soon off on my 4 th  attempt to see this truly stunning mega rare vagrant from North America. We had friends from the village coming to dinner on Wednesday night so I really didn’t fancy a strength sapping silly o’clock departure.  I hence left home at 07:00 on Wednesday morning and heading north again up the car park previously known as the M6.   The Kingfisher had relocated close to Samlesbury at a place called Roach Bridge on the river Darwen. I arrived at 09:30, found a parking spot very close to the bridge, and set off along a muddy footpath towards the reported location. Disconcertingly, many birders were heading back to their cars alr
1 comment
Read more