Patchwork Challenge

....is upon us, and along with it comes the time to sum up how you've all been getting on with the first month of the Patchwork Challenge. Loads of you have submitted scores using the form on the right of the blog - for which we're very grateful, but if you haven't, it'll soon be time to! If you haven't used the form, it's very simple, and if you've done things correctly you should get a message saying that you've submitted your score. We dont really have a cut off point for receiving scores - but if you want your score to feature in our round ups (here, some hype on twitter and facebook, and a monthly update on Birdguides) then the sooner the better! We'll leave the january scores form on the blog for about a week into February. Also, to the folk who have joined up more recently, we need you to give us your comparative scores if you have them (the comparative score is, if you have it, the average score - in points, not species of birds - of your...

There are 2 ways of accruing a high score - seeing a lot of birds, or finding high scoring birds, like the Gyrfalcon that recently graced an Askernish rooftop! (Don't forget, scarce birds worth three points are doubled if you find them, and rare birds worth 4 and 5 points are trebled if you are lucky enough to stumble across them). One way of assessing the quality of a year list is to look at the points scored per bird (which is very simple to work out - simply divide the number of points by the number of species). My points per bird for the last two years are as follows: 2011 - 1.297 2012 - 1.380 Living by the coast, I'm lucky enough to get several easy 2 pointers every year, like kittiwakes, razorbill and the like. These are my bread and butter. The ones that really make a difference to the points per bird are the ones for which you get the finds bonuses (see above). 2012 was a much better year than 2011 for finds bonuses, with three 'finds' scoring me an extr...

I went to my patch today 11th January 2013, which is a long coastal site in Millise, Co Down, Northern Ireland. I started at a place called Drumfad Bay, an area of coastal plants (mostly sea mayweed, scurvygrass and sea radish and some other wildplants), sand beach and rocky areas. I have been here before so had an idea of what to expect. I arrived at 1:15pm and it was cloudy and a cool 6C. When I arrived, the first thing I noticed was a pied wagtail wandering around a lot of seaweed (which there are masses of here right along the coast).  The tide was out so walked down the beach near the sea and the first thing I saw here was a Cormorant and a male Eider offshore. Next started walking up the beach north to Millisle Beach which is not that far further up the coast. As I started walking I saw 3 other Cormorant offshore flying past and 35 Oystercatcher which were the most numerous bird other than gulls, I saw a total of around 100 during the walk from Drumfad Bay to the en...

For the next week or so, up to the end of the month both Mark and myself will be away from home (and our patches!!) so we may be a wee bit slow replying to emails etc so please bear with us as we try and keep up as the first month draws to a close. Over the next few days we (Mark) will be posting a few short posts outlining a few developments, reminding people to post their end of month scores and sending in your best sightings of the month etc so please keep checking the blog and twitter for any updates. Have a great end to the month everyone, I’m off to The Gambia to get some sun and see some birds, while Mark is off to the North Sea to count kittiwakes and fulmars, I think I know where I’d rather be!

When you're as geeky as me, you can do this.... These graphs chart my progress through 2013 compared to the two previous years (i.e. the ones that contribute to my average). As you can see, I'm doing alright. The broad green line represents in a) number of species this year, and in b) the number of points I've accrued. I've already seen the same number of species and I'm only a few points behind the totals for 2012, so ahead of my average: not that this matters one bit at this stage though! The only reason this has any importance to me is that I'll be away for a wee bit of February, so there'll be a few weeks off patch. In which case, its good to get a wee bit ahead of yourself....

I moved to Cliftonville almost exactly three years ago after spending 25 years of local patch birding at Reculver/Minnis Bay just 20 miles further along the coast. The patch is indeed local to my home and I can be birding in the area within ten minutes of leaving home on foot. The area is situated at the extreme north east tip of Kent and is on a true headland, which lies where the North Sea and English Channel merge and it is serviced by the North Foreland Lighthouse, the presence of a Lighthouse always reminds me of a good birding area and I’m rather fond of them too. A lot of the areas here are on the private grounds of the North Foreland Golf Course which is rather annoying really as there is lots of decent habitat that you just cannot get into to cover. The coastal chalk cliffs are not that high and they stretch right around the coast in the area covered, although there are several small beautiful sandy bays that are very popular in the summer months with tourists.  Taking...

I’m sure you have all became very familiar with entering your patchwork data onto BirdTrack by now, but how much time have you spent looking at what you have submitted?   So far this year I have submitted 186 records, 13 complete lists and 55 species from my patch. Which is handy as it’s the same number of species on my excel scoresheet! Many of these have been from sea watches (sofa sea watching is definitely the way forward when you reach early morning temperatures of -9 ° C) so I will concentrate on some seabirds here. It has been relatively quiet so far but I’m still a wee bit surprised to see that I have only recorded 23 species while sea watching so far, even though sea watches constitute 112 out of my 186 records and all 13 of my complete lists! Comparing this to my 2012 BirdTrack data (August-December) where I recorded 676 records, 25 complete lists and 51 species, it means I have still plenty of seabirds to catch up with later in the year. There is no surprise with t...