Update – stocktake, take stock

With the recent posting of my ‘new species account’ for the scintillating Double-crested Cormorant, I’ve now posted some 33 write ups since I began doing so with the very first of these, that describing my efforts to twitch the Little Bustard in the Lower Avon Valley near Christchurch, Dorset in early January 1988.

I posted the latter on the 8th August last year, and the former on the 19th May this year.

Given it has taken me more than eight months to post just 33 accounts, I thought I should have a stock-take to work out where all this is going (or not).

The Little Bustard was (at the time) considered to be the 264th species on my UK list (now the 266th due, I think, to bad counting and / or the splitting of species such as Siberian Stonechat).

My UK list is now 508, so, assuming one or two more additions before I leave this world, I have so far posted about 12.5% (or 1/8) of some 250(?) accounts.

Put another way, at the current rate of posting, I should finish my task (should I accept it!) around about the end of 2027………. !

Writing up each new addition to my UK list isn’t the issue. I’m bang up to date with this, and so I already have an account for every new addition to my list since the Little Bustard way back when. These are relatively easily and quickly uploaded, when and if I chose one.

What does take time though is producing a drawing of the bird in question. I might have some basis for this in the form of notebook sketches or previously prepared drawings, but part of my self-imposed task is to illustrate each new bird. In addition, sourcing, attributing and captioning any images of the bird and / or twitch in question takes time; again, I already have many of these, but all the same, like the drawings, even once sourced, the scanning and snipping, etc., all takes time.

I’m certainly not complaining. However, after a prolonged period of ‘downtime’ I am once again working, on site in Inverness much of one week, and then from my home office base, as necessary, the following week, and so finding time for drawing, etc., is not easy.

I’m committed to doing so though, not least of all because I like posting my accounts, and find the process of doing so very enjoyable, despite (because of?) the time constraints. And, importantly, I have had some very supportive feedback which encourages me to do so; there is NO point sending my write-ups into cyberspace if no one else enjoys them.

So, no apologies, I’m here for the duration!

Of the 33 blogs already posted there is something of a concentration in more recent years (as these accounts already had more than adequate ‘notebook’ drawings which I used in lieu of preparing one specially). Otherwise, the rest of the accounts are spread out randomly but all the same reasonably evenly down the years.

To some extent this is coincidental; there’s a hard to resist challenge of not just choosing the accounts relating to the absolutely stonking ticks on my list, such as the firsts for the Western Palaearctic like Ancient Murrelet. Theoretically, I’ll eventually post every such account, but I have to give this some thought.

For example, as detailed, the saga of twitching the Little Bustard was the catalyst for preparing the write-ups; the whole occasion was so momentous, I was inspired to try to capture it. And as a result, I continued to do so for each new species I subsequently saw. Or at least, that was until I lost the account I wrote up about the Masked Shrike at Kilrenny in Fife in November 2004 due to some WORD failure. I was so mightily hacked off by this disaster (loosing some creative writing I could never exactly re-create immediately after I had written it) that I stopped writing up new species altogether, and only scribbled down very basic notes and sketches in my notebook or on scraps of paper, etc..

Life at this time was very complicated and ‘normal’ things like writing up new birds went by the by. It wasn’t until the Gyr Falcon in April 2016 that I resumed doing write-ups properly. However, the 30 or so intervening additions to my UK list were all finally (and successfully?) written up during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown years, on the basis of whatever notes I had or could be assembled from inter-web sources, etc.. I’ll perhaps post the Masked Shrike account next to provide more context here.

Anyway, back to an earlier theme. The Little Bustard was around about my 264th or 266th species on my UK list. Coincidentally, my much-loved ‘The Shell Guide to Birds of Britain and Ireland’ which was my go-to field guide when I entered the brave new world of birding in and from Dorset whilst working there in 1987/1988 describes 263 bird species as ‘regulars’ before moving on to the ‘vagrants’.

I came to twitching late (twitching butterflies rather than birds with Dave McAleavy and Paul Pugh, for example, on our wildlife trips in the mid-1980s). Not until I went to work at Wytch Farm in September 1987 did the new horizon on twitching really open up, partly as this move to a very different part of the UK coincided with the advent of the Bird Information Service on 0898 700222, or at least my awareness of it……. .

However, all the same, before the Little Bustard, I had already seen a good few species which could be considered as ‘vagrants’ rather than ‘regulars’, although there are no equivalent write-ups.

These species are listed here:

Ferruginous Duck	19th January 1974
Great Reed Warbler	22nd May 1984
Wilson’s Phalarope	27th September 1984
Ring-necked Duck	27th February 1985
Greater Sand Plover	16th August 1985
(subalpine warbler spp.)	17th May 1986
Spotted Sandpiper	8th August 1986
Cattle Egret	1st January 1987
White-billed Diver	1st February 1987
Black-winged Stilt	24th June 1987
Woodchat Shrike	30th August 1987
Booted Warbler	13th September 1987
Aquatic Warbler	19th September 1987
Siberian Stonechat	3rd October 1987
Black-and-white Warbler	10th October 1987
Ring-billed Gull	19th December 1987
Pied-billed Grebe	20th December 1987

They include a good range of birds and twitches such as the

• returning Ferruginous Duck I saw near my grand-parent’s house, on Doffcocker Lodge in Bolton, when I was 13,
• singing Great Reed Warbler that my co-worker, Chris Thomas and I saw at Saltmarshe near Goole, courtesy of Johnny McLoughlin, when we were staying with him in the North York Moors whilst we were doing the Upland Bird Survey for NNC and the weather wasn’t fit for surveying;
• long-staying Wilson’s Phalarope at Gibraltar Point that I jammed in on when attending a Sorby-Breck Ring Group weekend there;
• straying Ring-necked Duck and Spotted Sandpiper (what, rarities in East Lancashire????) that I were able to see courtesy of my day release course at Manchester Polytechnic;
• exciting Greater Sand Plover and Black-winged Stilt Dave McAleavy and I caught up with at Blakeney Harbour and at Holme respectively when we were on our ‘wildlife’ trips;
• freezing Cattle Egret in New Mills, Cheshire I saw early in 1987 when returning to work in Wigan after Christmas and New Year in Chesterfield;
• interesting(?) White-billed Diver and Woodchat Shrike twitches with Graham Workman when working in Wigan;
• thrilling rare birds I was able to see as a result of working in Dorset from September 1987 onwards including Booted Warbler, Aquatic Warbler, Siberian Stonechat and Black-and-White Warbler; and,
• long-staying Ring-billed Gull and Pied-billed Grebe at Chew Valley Reservoir and Kenfig Pool respectively I was able to take in when travelling from Dorset to deepest Herefordshire for Christmas 1987.

So, I have a dilemma. Should also I retrospectively write-up these rarities and post them on the blog too?

Conversely, after the Little Bustard, as well as numerous ‘vagrants’ I slowly knocked off a series of birds which could be considered as ‘regulars’ for which there IS a new species account. These species are listed here:

Woodlark	10th March 1988
Cirl Bunting	3rd April 1988
Quail	18th June 1988
Red-backed Shrike	24th June 1988
Golden Oriole	24th June 1988
Pomarine Skua	21st October 1988
Common Crane	19th March 1989
Common Rosefinch	12th October 1989
Capercaillie	26th May 1990
Long-tailed Skua	4th June 1990
Common Redpoll	13th October 1992

As such, I have a further dilemma. Should I ditch these accounts (or at least not post them on the blog)?

I have my own thoughts, but I’d be grateful for those of you who DO read the blog. Meanwhile, I shall try to keep on posting the existing accounts.