Further apologies, other tasks, scruffy notebook sketches of Slender-billed Curlew and must try harder in 2026

Shockingly, not since uploading my Blackpoll Warbler account on the 22nd October 2025 have I posted a 'new species account'.

I did, on the 4th December 2025, try to make some excuses for this inexcusable failure.

I suggested moving my social media allegiances from Twitter / X to Bluesky, becoming distracted by my attempts to collate a 'World List' and becoming a tad disillusioned by having ticks taken off me, and in particular, my continuing 'subalpine warblers' nightmare, had all conspired against me being as diligent as I once was in terms of regularly compiling, illustrating and posting my nonsense.

However, I'm pleased to report, I have now collated a vey good basis for a World List.

This has involved involved creating a huge EXCEL (which I abhor!) file. 

More specifically, it has involved inputting each species I've seen species by species (in correct systematic order as per the most recent International Ornithological Committee (IoC) checklist (http://www.worldbirdnames.org/) ) row by row, and building out from this, column by column, out from my UK list, to my Western Palaearctic list (evidencing some of my early birding trips), and then to each continent (or, more precisely, country therein) subsequently visited (North America, South America, Asia (actually only the Kuala Lumpur area of Malaysia beyond Middle Eastern countries including Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Egypt), Australasia and Antarctica, (I've not been to (sub-Sahara) Africa.

Clearly, it's not just as simple as adding trip list totals together, due to huge overlap in the range of birds - the Bar-tailed Godwits I saw in New Zealand are immaterial given I first saw them in the UK for example, despite being a bird species I saw just about as far away from the Ribble Estuary, where I saw my first, as it is possible to get.

And, given that I've birded for many decades, some species I saw years ago have been miraculously (and confusingly!) transformed into other species as a result of splitting or, at the very least, renaming.

So it's involved a LOT of trawling through old notebooks, trip lists and trip reports, creating of lists on Bubo and researching using online resources like eBird, etc., to create what I now have. However, at least now I have done the donkey work I'll never have to do it again, and the list will only improve as I work on it, and hopefully, increase as I go on more trips.

So it's been an interesting process, in many, many ways. For instance, I came across my sketch of Slender-billed Curlew in my Morocco notebook from December 1991/January 1992, and, by a quirky set of circumstances, I have ended up trading this page from my notebook (as an 'important historical record') with the fantastically talented Hungarian wildlife artist, Szabolcs Kokay, for an original work by him, as he is so fascinated with this now sadly extinct species. Not a bad deal, at least as far as I'm concerned!

It's too early to divulge anything as sordid as my World List total, but suffice to say, the exercise has done a lot to reinvigorate my interest in the same, and even made me speculate about a reasonable World List target to aim for over the next few years.

So, although I now intending continuing to improve this good draft World List (by re-visiting old notebooks, writing trip reports and creating trip lists and country lists on Bubo, and double-checking the good draft in doing so), planning and going on more big trips to increase my World List, and, in the New Year, returning to a task which I'm fascinated by (an investigation of the historical growth of both the official British and Scottish lists, and a comparison with my equivalents) I WILL get back up to speed with my blogposts in the near future.

Honest.

Seasons greetings.

Apologies, Subalpine Warbler hell, and other gripes

So. It's been a while.

I'll admit to having lost momentum, being too busy, doing too many other things (some bird-related, like attempting, retrospectively, to collate my world list) to have compiled, illustrated and posted any new 'new species accounts' for way too long.

Meanwhile, my move from Twitter / X to BlueSky (fundamentally a very good thing) has reduced 'traffic' as people are no longer necessarily aware of my postings.

I will get back up to speed, honestly. There's plenty more accounts yet to be posted.

But, I have to admit, the current taxonomic upheavals haven't helped.

How can birds which can be differentiated in the field be 'lumped' (the redpoll group) whereas others, that can't be differentiated in the field remain 'split' (the subalpine warbler group)?

As a case in point, I was very glad to take in the Levenwick 'Western Subalpine Warbler' on my visit to Shetland last autumn.

This conveniently backfilled another void in my list which had been created by the splitting of subalpine warblers, given my poor record with them. The bird had been caught and ringed, and scrutinised in the field by all-comers, and proclaimed to be a Western.

So I was suitably pleased not just to take it in, but, also, on my return home, to write it up, and arrange to post my account here (as what was my last but one account).

However, it has since emerged that the bird was (presumably on the basis of genetic material) re-identified as an Eastern Subalpine Warbler. 

D'oh!!!!!

What chance do we stand?????

So I've taken down the posting about it. And I STILL need Western Subalpine Warbler!

Collins Guide plate of Subalpine Warblers subscript: unless it's a spring male, just don't even go there.

So yes, I'm all a bit disillusioned; my listing was once a relatively simple exercise, by now it is mired in science way beyond me. Just keeping up with taxonomic changes is a full-time task on its own!

However, I will be back!