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My 2025 birding review

    


 

My birding year was totally dominated by celebrating somehow reaching three score years and ten with 19 days of full on birding in wonderful Costa Rica. To be honest, without Costa Rica it would have been a really duff year with UK birding being poor compared to the last few years. Even Shetland in October, which I forewent for Costa Rica in November, was comparatively slow compared to previous fantastic years.

 

The additions to my UK list were the lowest they have been since I started keeping records with just eight lifers taking me on to a UK bird list of 430 birds. Somewhat strangely, four of these eight new lifers occurred in the traditionally  slow months of January and December.

 

Here are my eight new 2025 UK ticks

 

  • ·      White-billed Diver
  • ·      Booted Eagle
  • ·      Song Sparrow
  • ·      Montagu’s Harrier (at last a big bogie bird falls!)
  • ·      Zitting Cisticola
  • ·      Black-faced Bunting
  • ·      Lesser Crested Tern
  • ·      Scops Owl

 

The most enjoyable UK birding I had this year by far was the many days spring birding in my happy place, the Wyre Forest. I’m already planning to spend as much time as I can again there this coming spring.

 

So  onto  Costa Rica! 

 

If you have never been its hard to express what a paradise this is for the keen birder with such varied habitat that a journey of 30 miles completely changes the birds you will see.  From the perspective of my moral compass the country has everything going for it, friendly, safe, hunting totally banned, 28% of the country set aside for nature and no army – “teachers not soldiers”.

 

The Heatherlea tour was very well organised.  The other guests were a very friendly bunch and great company. The local guide, Paco, was truly exceptional, both in his people and birding skills. In my previous experience the people skills are not always guaranteed!

 

The birding list at the end of the holiday was exceptional with 364 birds seen of which 348 were life ticks. In total I saw 534 birds in 2025, the highest since I have been keeping records.

 

We saw all the key species, in particular Resplendent Quetzal and Sun Bittern which are at the top of most people’s Costa Rica wish list. The hummingbird feeders at the lodges were an absolute delight and very hard to pull yourself away from. The numerous chilled out boat rides were also a highlight with lots of relaxed birding and good views.

 

Bird of the year


I’m going to have to go for the obvious here, Resplendent Quetzal – what a stunner!

 

Mammal of the year


I’m going for the Northern Tamandua that we had fantastic views of munching on termites in a tree from our boat. 

 

Wild-life moment of the year


This has to be the incredible Spider wasp in Costa Rica dragging a paralysed Tarantula ,which must have been one hundred times its weight, into its burrow.

 

Photo of the year


Sometimes, just sometimes, everything works out. My personal favourite is this picture of  a Green Heron again taken from a boat in Costa Rica. I underexposed the image by a massive 3 stops to completely blacken the background producing a simple  and totally uncluttered yet perfect image of the Heron hunting for prey.

     

The runner up is this capture of a Pacific Screech Owl which spent the day roosting with its mate in a palm at my favourite location of the whole trip, the wonderful La Ensenada Lodge

  


I simply can't complete  this section without at least one picture of a hummingbird so here you go!


Dip of the year

 

For shear annoyance value  and buggeration factor I’m going for the Black Scoter at Holylake in Cheshire, the only Scoter missing from my UK list. A long drive, a 40 minute slog across wet sand and scoping a distant flock of Common Scoters with no sign of the target bird was bad enough. Having given up at lunch time I was just settling in for a chilled out afternoons birding at a nearby RSPB reserve when the dam bird was  apparently reported again. Another futile slog across the wet sand was made even worse when I discovered that at least some of the reports were of a hybrid! Not a day to remember!

 

 Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia! 

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