With tongue in cheek, I normally call my annual birding reviews “Top of the Flops” but this seems a really disingenuous title for a truly exceptional year during which I added a staggering 27 birds to my UK life list.
The birding event of the year, perhaps even of the decade, was the star spangled influx of ultra-rare American passerines in September driven by an unprecedented combination of events. Lee, a truly monstrous storm sprawling across some 15,000 square miles of the Atlantic with winds up to 165mph coincided with the mass migration of passerines along the west coast of north America. The resulting sheer number of rare passerines blown to our shores was quite overwhelming ,for example 46 rare vagrant Red-eyed Vireos were found within the space of a few days. The epicentre of the fall of rare birds, and hence the September destination for many UK based birders, was the Pembrokeshire islands and mainland coast, see my bird of the year below. Every silver lining has a cloud and in this case it’s a big one, spare a thought for the many thousands of birds that didn’t make it to our shores and perished at sea.
Ten autumn days in Shetland again delivered big time with Veery, Eastern Sub-alpine Warbler, White's Thrush and Yellow Warbler added to my UK list, the later being due to a most fortunate weather related delay to our return ferry.
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| White's Thrush |
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| Veery |
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| The UK's first Grey-headed Lapwing |
Bird of the year
Oh boy this is a really tough one with the Whites Thrush, Yellow Warbler, Black Winged Kite, and Grey-headed Lapwing all in contention but I’m going for the UK’s third American Magnolia Warbler delivered to Pembrokeshire by Storm Lee, see here. Visually, it’s a truly stunning little bird and it epitomises the perfect storm of American passerines in September discussed above.
A close run second is the UK’s 8th Yellow Warbler, see here, where a series of fortunate events conspired to deliver this bird to Jeremy and myself at the end of our Shetland trip. We were still only on the island because our ferry the previous night had been cancelled due to storm force winds. We also only had a few hours in the morning to bird before catching a flight back to the mainland and could so easily have been in the wrong location to get to it in time.
Photo of the year
I’m going for my picture of a Greenshank taken in flight at Slimbridge in July which won Bird Guides picture of the week. For once everything came together perfectly for this photo and the excellent eye tracking capability of the R5 proved its weight in gold keeping the Greenshank in sharp focus as it flew, see here.
Dip of the Year
There are always so many worthy contenders for this one but, for share buggeration factor, I’m going for my Bridled Tern dip. It had been present in a flock of Sandwich Terns for a number of days and indeed had been seen at dawn on the morning of my visit before I arrived. Sadly, it was never seen again resulting in eight hours of relentlessly going through each and every Sandwich Tern in the flock trying to find it.
Blog title of the year
“Having a Quail of a time in Gloucestershire” was a close run second but I’m going for my personal favourite “For Hume the bell Tolls”, the title of my blog to see a rare Hume’s Warbler, see here.
A very happy and bird filled 2024 to all and thanks to everyone for reading my blog this year!
Birds which I have never heard about! Beautiful photos as usual. Which vagrant will be seen in the UK more often and which ones will perish at sea? An incredible Blog. Thanks Jim.
ReplyDeleteThanks Patricia! I'm not sure if it's possible to say which birds make it and which don't - I suspect it's pot luck and depends on the birds health. I guess bigger bird will have more fat reserves so are more likely;y to make it.
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