Patchwork Challenge

Never mind all that best patch find stuff...patch listing is all about the bread and butter, so whats the commonest stuff you've never seen on your patch? I've had 187 species at girdle ness, my patch, including a few goodies such as brunnichs guillemot, white billed diver, and a good assortment of decent passerines. However, during the 5 years I've been covering the patch properly (and a further ten years with less frequent visits beforehand) I've never had pochard or treecreeper!  I have single records of coot, moorhen, and very few records of pheasant, collared dove, and coal tit.  But that's the beauty of patching. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if I saw any of the above on my way down the shops (with the exception of pochard perhaps!) but finding one of these common rarities gives me a genuine thrill, more so than finding a regular 'rare' bird like, for example a yellow-browed warbler. I recall a few springs ago, I came across a stunning, singing ...

I thought I would add a bit of colour to the blog, albeit through a very poor photo of my best find on my patch at Hemsby. What's your best find been on patch? Let us know and if you have a (better) photo we will post them on here.  Ortolan bunting - south Winteron Dunes or north end of my patch as I prefer to call it. 

There's been plenty of interest in this so far, with well over 20 patches submitted in the first few days and hopefully plenty more to come. Thanks to everyone who's signed up so far, we hope it proves to be a fun experience. Thanks also to everyone who has sent maps of their patches in. This isn't essential but we may well use them in future and a map of your patch might be a useful thing to have if we ask you to contribute a guest blog when you find that azure tit.....if you want to create a map, the following links have been used by other patchers.... https://www.mapdevelopers.com/area_finder.php http://www.freemaptools.com/area-calculator.htm http://www.earthpoint.us/Shapes.aspx If you look over to the right you will also see that we've added a link to Birdtrack (well, Ryan has added it but I will try to take some of the credit...). It's not essential to the competition but we think it would be brilliant to contribute some data to this fantastic project....

The birding fraternity has seen a shift in attitudes recently, with many birders turning their attention from twitching towards rarity finding.   As a result, there also seems to have been an upturn in the profile watching a local patch. The advantages of watching a local patch are obvious. Low fuel costs and travel time aside, great pleasure can be derived from getting to learn a place inside out, observing how the seasons change, and getting value from common species that otherwise wouldn’t get a second glance. Throw in the potential for the odd rare bird or scarcity and to me, you have a really exciting, involving way to enjoy your birding. So what could enhance the patch watchers enjoyment a little? Well, perhaps adding an element of competition would do the trick. We’re a competitive bunch, us birders, both with our peers and ‘internally’ as well. We like a gloat, we like to add things to lists, and we like to know what the numbers are. So why not see if we can add a ...