2011: The Year in Review

So here we are once again, in a seemingly all too quick repeat of 2010


2012 Goals
Professional Goals
- I am employed, which is more than I was this time last year. What more can I ask for? Oh, perhaps that I remain employed. The climate is still treacherous in my chosen industry, but for now, I shall make hay while the sun shines.


Personal Goals
- To actually go birding. Just a bit. Pretty please.
- To win the coveted Golden Mallard, worth at least fifty quid. If I win it, I'm going to sell it.
This past year I had no birding goals at all. This resulted in me seeing a Short-toed Treecreeper, so a fat lot of use that was. Maybe I need to be more specific? I shall not twitch stupid birds just because they are ticks. How about that? Would I stick to it? What do you think?


 
Best Birding Moment
It has been a pretty fabulous year. I already gave best bird award to the Cory's Shearwater (here), so I need to choose something else. If you recall, there were a couple of contenders, so I think that day on Scilly, when we went over on a day trip expecting to see a Solitary Sandpiper (dull) and dipped it, but instead came away with a Black-and-White Warbler and a Bee-eater that showed so well that my photo of it made it into Birding World. Rounding the corner of one of those narrow Scilly lanes up near Maypole to ask a couple of guys what they were looking at... well, what can you say? Those that were with me can testify to the rapture. A great moment.


But was it better that the exhausted Jack Snipe on Shetland that was oblivious to our presence, so much so that it walked over my hand? A common bird perhaps, but certainly a moment that I will remember for a very long time indeed. I mean it walked over my hand. Not around my hand, or around me, but over me. I doubt I'll ever have anything like that happen again.

And let's not forget the Sandhill Crane that, with impeccable timing, decided to grace the area around Loch of Strathbeg for precisely the few days that I was on my way up to Shetland with an eight hour lay-off in Aberdeen. Arriving at the airport I hustled to a hire car and an hour later was stood on the edge of a field watching this stonking rarity, which of course was all the sweeter for knowing that my mates were either already on Shetland, grimacing, or stuck down in London. Boy did I feel smug, which is of course what birding is all about.

Best UK Trip
Hmmm, not like I've been anywhere, is it? The Waterthrush was ace, but it is the previous trip to Scilly that I remember more. Yes, the Bee-eater one again. Oh, and the Black-and-White Warbler. Did I mention those already? Possibly. What about the Semi-P that came within six feet? No? Well, what about the incredible sea-watch off Pendeen with double figures of Sabine's Gulls and double figure of Grey Phalaropes? Somewhat of a glorious weekend by anybody's standards, including my very low ones. Yes, that gets my vote. Me, Bradders and Crofty on a fly-by-night expedition to the south-west, utterly exhausting, but top notch birding that makes Cornwall seem not too far away at all.....

Best Bird
Two words. Cory's and Shearwater. Magnificent. 


Worst Bird
Easy. Short-toed Treecreeper. A boring brown excuse for a bird that could not possibly have been worth the £25 of diesel that it cost me to twitch it. For day one of its stay I was adament - I was not going, end of story. I willed it to die overnight, but it didn't, and so by day three, or maybe even day two (I have no shame) I found myself tootling across to Landguard to place a meaningless tick against it. OK, so I saw it well, well enough to photograph the steps in the wingbar, but seriously, who am I kidding? Pathetic.

Worst UK Trip
Most pleasingly, a very tough one this year. No stupid single-day twitches to the north-east, no nightmare walks down Blakeney Point. So that being the case, it has to be said that Shetland was disappointing, especially given the highs of last year. It was good, lots of decent bird, but it couldn't live up to the previous year. The weather, almost constantly westerly, was never going to produce much; that any eastern birds got through at all was a miracle. There was far too much plantation-bashing for birds that were patently non-existent, and we should have cut our losses and gone to the pub, or at least not been quite so relentless. Self-finding rarities is all well and good, but in truth we didn't stand a chance on the forecast we had, and my desire for continued flogging of habitat that had no birds in it unfortunately did not match that of Bradders. I tried to talk sense into him, but he was having none of it; consequently it was extremely hard work. Then again, I think that to appreciate Shetland, you have to realise that it can't be like 2010 every year, and if you go, you're taking a big gamble. Mine did not pay off, and the good birds were literally either side of my trip. Some you win, some you lose. I'm definitely going back - when it's good it's phenomenal. 

 

Best Foreign Trip
Easy-peasy. Not that I have many trips to choose from, but the February trip to the Baltics was awesome. Cold, but awesome. I have never experienced cold like it, and my clearest memory, other than ending up at forty-five degrees with what was left of the car in a snow-drift, is of walking early one morning from the car to a ferry terminal. It was only about two-hundred yards, so I didn't bother with gloves. Oh. My. God. I felt my hands beginning to die after about twenty paces, it was the most extraordinary feeling. It was, I think, minus twenty-six centigrade, plus (or minus again) whatever the wind was doing. A superb trip, not huge numbers of birds, but most of the targets bagged in some stunning scenery. We felt truly pioneering.

Best Domestic Moment
An improved performance this year, but I was fairly proud of hosting a tea-party for all of Muffin's friends and mothers. I am almost the lone bloke in the playground, so this was quite a coup, or so it felt. I managed to get (and keep) the house tidy, and produce a passable meal of various bits and pieces. I deferred the cake-making to Mrs L, but other than that it was all my own work, and nobody died. Or at least not that I noticed.

Worst Domestic Moment
Usually I have more choice here that any other category. Let me pop downstairs and ask Mrs L what she thinks - I failed to ask this last year and possibly therefore denied you the full and awful truth.


Right, I'm back, and do you know what, the woman is stumped! Yup, for the first time ever, she can't think of anything that I have foulded up. Hah! How about that then? Mind you, I did ask her what the worst one was; presumably she could rattle off dozens of minor incidents, but nothing particularly stands out as being especially bad. So, can I think of anything?


No, I can't. This must mean that I am now, after three years, a fully-fledged Domestic God. Well thank goodness for that. A long winding road, a few hiccups, but we started at five, we're still five, and all four walls are still standing. Shame then that I am now back at work. The garden has gone to wrack and ruin, and the lawn is now an attractive mesh of mud and moss, but hey, I'm always looking at the sky, so what does it matter?

Most Amusing Photograph
This is a photo of Jos sea-watching in Estonia. The weather was so severe that we very nearly dipped the sea entirely, but when we finally managed to get to it, it was one of those great feelings. We had found the sea, it was time to sea-watch. From the sea.

No annual review should be without a pranged car it seems, so here is the offering from 2011. This was taken only a couple of hours after the sea-watching photograph above, and was most unfortunate. Our lovely Renault Laguna was never the same again, and though we made it back to our ferry, we then transferred to a Suzuki Shitter which was nowhere near as good. Though someone did manage to get caught speeding in it....

So, another year done. What will the next one bring?
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Ooh the tourniquet!

I have cracked and bought a smart phone. It is considerably smarter than me. It has a special keyboard wave swipe your fingers around that is why the title of this piece is like a rubber band excitement. It also has voice recognition of assault. So get ready for many unintelligible future blog posts.

Wait for it......the Patch

A top-class hangover meant I needed to get out. Even though I risked potentially getting a patch year tick, there was nothing for it, I needed air. I figured Wanstead Flats was less likely to produce anything than the Park, whose lakes and ponds might have harboured some goodie like a Smew or a Goosander, so that's where I went. Happily I was quite correct in my assessment, and beyond twenty thousand Woodpigeons, there was nothing doing. Until I started looking through the Gulls. With no other birds to speak of, it was only a matter of time before my eyes were drawn to the large conglomoration of white-coloured things sat on the playing fields...

Hang on a minute - that one looks a bit odd. With only 7x bins on todays outing, I had a horrible feeling I was looking at a White Winger, albeit a small one. I shuffled closer. Still looking pretty white-winged. Closer still....Yes!!! Er, hmmm, er, yes, er very nice. Grrrrrr....

Definitely white-winged!

But that initial view was unfortunately about as exciting as it got

I eventually tracked it down to a goal post.

Yuk.

Hanging On!

Two pieces of good news. The first is that I survived Christmas without any kind of Mr Creosote incident, and am now back on the path of virtue and slimming. The second is that the Firecrests also survived, and are apparently very much looking forward to making an appearance on my January 1st day list. At least that's what I assume all the squeaking meant.

So how was Christmas for you? Whilst my children received veritable mountains of gifts, I received one solitary present - from my sister - a field guide to the birds of West Africa. Before you go thinking that she is some kind of genius (though she is, I must admit, fairly smart), this was at my suggestion. Not that I have any firm plans to visit Western Africa, but I am extremely partial to leafing through foreign field guides and dreaming of the day that I will at last visit. Also on the shelf at the moment are various tomes covering Trinidad and Tobago and the greater West Indies. One day, one day....

Birding abroad is brilliant, bloody brilliant. You can take nothing for granted, even your ears count for nothing. It is birding at its rawest, its most intimate. You rely on sight, and nothing else. I rarely go abroad purely for birding, there is more often than not an ulterior motive, so usually I don't even take a scope - luggage is at a premium, bins is all I have. So I have to get close. Very close. I take my time, there is no urgency. And so it is back to basics, how birding should be - no preconceptions, nothing taken for granted. It also helps that foreign birds simply love having cameras shoved in their faces, whereas British birds dive for cover at the slightest hint of a long lens. Now that I am gainfully employed once again, though for how long I cannot say, I am looking forward to being able to go on a few jaunts abroad. Whether it will be Western Africa, or whether I'll build up to that, I have no idea. But right now the mere thought of being somewhere warm and filled to the brim with colourful and extremely photogenic birds is getting me through the holiday season.

The Patch List Challenge

I am a patch worker. I have always been a patch worker. Twitcher? Maybe a bit, maybe more than a bit lately. There is an undeniable thrill about seeing an extremely rare bird, especially one that your mates haven’t seen. The travelling part is what does my head in. As part of a longer trip, say a weekend away, I can cope with a bit of car time, but the mad dashes, rushed views and then piling back into the car I can do without. A weekend trip, albeit planned at very short notice, where you score the bird in question first thing and then have essentially two whole days of relaxed birding in front of you, they can be really good. Often though, that isn’t possible. Various commitments get in the way, and so if you’re going to see a bird, you’ve got a very limited window.

On the patch there is rarely that worry, and even a fifteen minute visit can be rewarding. I’m fortunate in that I live literally next to the patch – I can be counting birds on my patch list as soon as I’m out of the front door. This past year has seen me eclipse my previous best year by some margin. For a while I thought I might not make three figures, but I needn’t have worried. Some fine autumn migrants saw me slip past that particular hurdle, and before I knew it I had equalled my previous best of 108. A late flurry of winter quality, including garden Crossbill and Brambling, and then the memorable and invisible Oystercatcher, and I had chalked up a new record. Time to wheel out those laurels and have a well-deserved rest on them methinks.

Not so! Enter the Patch List Challenge! The theory is quite simple, thrash your patch day after day and you could win the coveted Golden Mallard, worth, I am told, at least fifty quid on Ebay. How could I resist, the thought of that gem of pure quality gracing my mantelpiece....I had to enter! In order to even things out between those lucky so and sos who bird blinding coastal patches, you’re competing only against yourself – you need to beat the average of your three previous yearlists. The patch worker who has the highest percentage versus that number wins the duck. It was unfortunate that this year’s patch total was my highest ever and thus bumped up the average, but as soon as I decided to enter I stopped going on the patch and closed my eyes whenever I went near a window. Not that I have had any time anyway, meagre daylight (though I enjoyed my extra minute yesterday) and work have essentially killed off any patch-working ambitions these past three months. But if I can get myself back into the groove of birding before work in the spring months, I could be a contender! Hopefully it will be a laugh, and though I have only actually met one of the entrants, they all seem eager to take the piss and generally muck about, which is one of the things I particularly enjoy about birding. Don’t take it, or yourself, too seriously.

I’m eagerly awaiting January 1^st 2012. My spreadsheets are primed and ready, and my mental list of ticks is at the forefront of my mind. Last year Nick and I managed 56 species, this year I’m aiming for 60. The only thing that’s going to stop me is rain. Or if it’s a bit cold. Or windy. Or.....

Gluttony

The average UK glutton is set to consume somewhere around 6500 calories over the course of Christmas Day, or so I overheard on the radio. That’s the equivalent of 23 Mars Bars. Can you imagine that many Mars Bars on a plate in front of you? Can you imagine eating them all, even across several sittings? I couldn’t even do that with Doubledeckers. Grotesque, yet many of us will nonetheless eat and eat and eat on Christmas Day. A handful of peanuts here, an enormous portion of Turkey here, and don’t forget those delicious mini-sausages wrapped in bacon.....

I’ve been noticing that I have become slightly more rotund (than usual) of late. Pictures at some Christmas drinks showing approximately eighteen chins convinced me that I needed to know quite how bad it was. Shortly afterwards I bought some bathroom scales. We have not had any bathroom scales since the children broke them about two years ago. They denied it of course, blaming that perennial scamp Notme, responsible for most acts of destruction and vandalism at Chateau L. I stepped on the scales, and once I’d shifted my enormous gut to one side, peered down at the dial. Assuming some kind of mistake, I stepped off, confirmed it was at zero, and got on again. Then I got off again, and lay down on the floor to check it was level. It was. With a sense of dread I got on again. Modesty prevents me from sharing the number, but Notme has a lot to answer for. I am heavier than I have ever been.

Buying a set of scales two weeks before Christmas was perhaps very foolish, or perhaps very sensible. It opens up two very distinct avenues of thought. One is that I will take it easy over Christmas and refuse all delicacies, which would be very sad. The second is that I will gorge myself senseless as usual, and along with the rest of the population start a new regime at the beginning of January. This is known as the cop-out option. I’ve not yet decided what I’m going to do. The house is currently filled to the rafters with nice things. Cheese, cold meats, nuts, biscuits, and we are never short of something to drink. I am not sure I have the willpower, which is presumably what got me into this predicament in the first place.

Mrs L has also had a go on the scales. Self-preservation prevents me from divulging any details, but she too was shocked. Pregnancy saves her from the ignominy of a new personal best, but she has agreed that buying the scales, whilst sad, was a good thing.  The scales are the old fashioned sort with a dial, the primary measurement being Stones and Pounds, so it’s also helping the children get to grip with fractions. Muffin is particularly good at fractions, as he showed when Mrs L stepped off the scales looking miserable. “Well?”, I said. “Something and a half” she replied. “.....”and three-quarters!” a small voice chimed in. I know who I believe! Err, Mrs L, obviously.

Almost exactly a week after buying the scales, I have failed to shed a single pound, which is indicative of the cop-out route being taken. Hmmm. To add insult to injury, yesterday I had lunch with two former colleagues. We had not seen each other for a few years, and so naturally the conversation turned to how much fatter each one of us was than the other. Many years ago, when all working in the same team, we started a weight-loss competition. Inspired by another colleague’s tales of extreme weight-loss via means of a beetroot, tuna and egg diet which culminated in him collapsing on a train, we agreed to a weekly public weigh-in, and clubbed together to buy a set of scales which were kept under my desk. Any week-on-week rise was chargeable, with the proceeds going towards a bumper blow-out lunch when the competition was over. I remember that lunch to this day.

Being much younger than we are now, and far more immature hem hem, our weekly weigh-in was keenly contested, with all sorts of random chocolate items mysteriously appearing on co-competitors’ desks in the run up to the appointed time. The critical thing was not to go up. But as each week set the bar lower, you did not want to lose too much weight in a week that would then see you put some or all of it back on the following week, and thus have to cough up. This led to all sorts of shenanigans, such as tactical water-drinking immediately before the weigh-in, and on one occasion an emergency haircut. Being technically and analytically-minded, we kept a running spreadsheet, and I discovered yesterday that one of the guys still had it. It dates back to 2004, when I was still in my twenties, and very happily the password was still “domisfat”, Dom being one of the three competitors. Remarkably, he is still approximately the same weight as he ended up in 2007, which was when our competition finally ran out of steam, whereas I am in a different league. Perhaps the Sekitori league.... Anyway, he only ever gained weight over those three years, and was a major contributor to the lunch. He had some minor victories, but overall the line went only in one direction. Mine on the other hand was all over the place. Over those three years my weight varied by 23 pounds, but the start and end points are exactly the same, so an entirely pointless exercise. I can see that during the first week of March 2007 I lost 6lbs, and another 3lbs the week after that. The week after that required a pay-out!

We’re now talking about starting the spreadsheet again. The intervening four years have not been kind to me, to the extent that we would actually need to increase the range scale on the Y-axis. A large vertical line would ensue, and I would need to lose almost fully 3 stone to get back to my lowest ever point on the graph. Hugely embarrassing, and highly motivating. How I ever allowed myself to fall so comprehensively off the wagon I don’t know. Age plays a part, but I see plenty of people my age who are thin, so I am coming to the inescapable conclusion that I have a thyroid problem. This is hugely relieving, as no doubt it is for many fat people. Yup, that’s right, I have a medical condition. It’s definitely not related to the fact that I eat too much and do no exercise. Glad we cleared that up.

My timing is impeccable - look what I found today on the BBC!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16275027

I sent it to Mrs L. She replied that she loves me. Both of me.

The 2011 Year List that I didn't do

Regular readers will know I bang on about year-listing quite a lot. This year however I didn't bang on about it quite as much. Shocking though it may sound, I didn't do one. No, really. The year I really did one was 2009. It was fun at the beginning, awful close to the end, and then quite fun again at the very end. The angst of dipping my eighth-seventh Wryneck, not to mention the absurdity of the price of fuel, convinced me that it would be foolish to do another one, so in 2010 I took it nice and easy, and it was only when I returned from a monumental week on Shetland that I changed my mind, and drove some pointless miles to see birds I'd seen plenty of before. Three hundred, that magical number in the UK year-listing stakes, certificate-worthy no less (no, I didn't), fell just over two frenetic weeks later, and I breathed a long sigh of hypocrital relief. Then I went to Cornwall. And then Devon. And then Manchester....

This year, I was determined that there would be none of this stupidity, none of this weakness. As such, I started out with no goals, no predetermined targets. I will see what I see, I said. My love-hate relationship with twitching also started off at a new low, though a Lesser White-fronted Goose on Jan 2nd tells another story. Largely I have stuck true to my word, though why I deemed a trip to Landguard for a Short-toed Treecreeper necessary I really have no idea - the one trip, which despite the tick, I still feel embarrassed about. Rubbish, and then some. As the year progressed, I became progressively more twitchy, which culminated in not one but two trips to Scilly, finally paying me back for an entire week in 2009 where all I saw was a crappy Radde's Warbler.

I have of course, despite any protestations to the contrary, been keeping a year list all along. Well, not keeping one as such, but at any point in the year I could have told you how many. Does that count as not keeping one? I think it does. Anyhow, I reckon the year's birding is basically done, and so I am proud (er, maybe) to be able to announce that my 2011 year list is on a whopping 271. This strikes me as quite a lot, particularly given my stated intentions, for it puts my just outside the top ten on Bubo, and if you look at what I have not seen, I suspect I could very easily sneak in. I won't of course, I can't be bothered, but it does show that if you twitch a few things, and it doesn't have to be very many, your incidental count of birds will be surprisingly high.

I twitched about twenty birds this year, and dipped just one - an extremely uncooperative (though previously highly cooperative) Great Snipe at Cley. By the time I got there, it was bored of all the tape recordings and had buggered off to the far side of the marsh, where it remained until after I left. Such is life, but on the whole my approach to twitching is so tempered in sensibleness that I very rarely dip. This is great, as dipping sucks. It means I'll never have the enormous list that those who drop everything at the slightest hint of a possible have, but it ensures an almost one hundred percent happy outcome.

So, 271 birds, and very nice they were too. More interesting is what I didn't see. Birds you would think would be absolute gimmes that any birder worth his salt would see at least once a year. Here is the roll of shame.

Black-throated Diver, Little Auk, Long-eared Owl, Bewick's Swan, Scaup, Grey Partridge, Turtle Dove, Little Owl, Dipper, Willow Tit, Water Pipit.



MISSING

I mean how can you bird for an entire year and not see a Little Owl? Pfffff. There are oodles of them about. Wanstead is bracketed by them, with regular birds in Walthamstow and in the Ingrebourne Valley. Somehow I've managed to avoid seeing one all year, I'm not sure how. And I could go and see a Water Pipit tomorrow in all likelihood, less than 15 miles from home, but I just can't drum up the enthusiasm. Oh well. That little lot would have seen me clear 280. I've also not done my traditional dash around Scotland, so no Ptarmigan, Caper, Black Grouse, or Crested Tit. Also no Eagles. Approaching 290. Add in the Hoopoes, Rose-coloured Starlings and Wrynecks (!) of this world, things like Rough-legged Buzzard and Red-necked Grebe, Corncrake and Quail, and you're on the cusp of 300 yet again. There isn't really a great deal of difference between a normal year list, and a perceived big year list. I wonder what all the fuss is about?