Hello, Goodbye

After the recent announcement of James Common's addition to the admin team we sadly have to announce that three of the guys are having to stand down. Jonathan Scragg, Mark Reeder and Keith Dickinson have had to withdraw for a variety of reasons but we wish them all well and thank them for their valuable contributions over the last twelve months.

Keith, Mark and Jonathan - dead to us.

Jonathan enters his final year at university and is currently on a stint on North Ronaldsay and this combo means he sadly doesnt have the time to dedicate to the cause. Jonny was our link to NGB during his time with us and was responsible for our output in that arena and proved very effective at forging links between the two organisations.

Mark was brought in as an inland advocate and helped us get a feel for what was important to the inland PWC'er. Mark's real life precluded input into PWC'ing after the spring and he reluctantly(?) decided to step down and focus on beating Bill Aspin in the Inland North minileague.

Keith has been recognized professionally and as such wont have the time to put into PWC moving forward - great for him but less so for us. Keith was responsible for the monthly Forest Optics Best Find competition and also brought us updates from his suburban patch.

Good luck to all three and we hope they continue to enjoy participating in the challenge.

Of course this has implications on the challenge and we are seeking one or two volunteers to join Ryan, James S, Pete, Niall and James C and whom are interested in writing 3 or 4 articles a month (one long form and three blogposts) and contributing to the social media output from the team. Our ideal candidates would be IT literate with experience of using blogger, facebook, twitter and excel. They must be able to write in a report style and be able to convey interesting themes and engage readers. We would like to get an inland birder on board so that we continue to advocate effectively for the full cross section of the PWC community. People with good links across the birding community are welcome as we continue to foster relationships with other groups to improve the PWC experience for the participants. If you are interested and feel that you tick a number of these boxes then let us know by email patchworkchallenge@gmail.com.

Urban Birding 2014

I patchwork in urban North Leeds and I know that I will probably never find a National rarity and thus get mega points and a chance at the top points spot. However that wasn't the main reason for me joining Patchwork Challenge last year, for me the big attraction was the Comparative Minieague. This is where you compete against yourself, or rather last year's version of yourself. Can you see as many birds and score as many points as you did in previous years? This levels the playing field somewhat and allows the birder with a relatively poor patch (like me) to compete with the lucky birders at hotspots such as Spurn Point, Cley or Portland Bill.

Last year my final tally of 67 species gave me 69 points, which was a higher count than my records going back 20+ years indicated I should expect. So there's my target for 2015 - beat 69 point. So far from 3 visits I've amassed over 60% of last year's total so there's every hope that I will have a healthy 100% or more in the Comparative League at the end of the year.

Eccup showing the low water levels

Just recapping on 2014 on my patch, it was a bit of a mixed bag really, if I'd known about the engineering work being carried out at Eccup Reservoir I might have chosen differently. The work there had lowered the water levels quite dramatically and allowed for a big increase in vegetation at the margins. This meant very restricted views of the water, a lack of decent wader habitat and low numbers of duck. As the works finish in March 20105 I am expecting the duck population to grow as the water level rises and hopefully this rise will drown some of the waterside vegetation. Due to this I only made a handful of visits to the Reservoir during 2014.

Looking over the fields to Adel Dam

 Adel Dam performed well during last year, I scored with all the expected species bar one, couldn't find Lesser Redpoll on the reserve at all, which was odd as I'd seen them during the latter half of 2013. An unexpected species from last year was the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker that took to visiting the feeding station during late October and November. Sadly even though I spent almost 20 hours over 3 days I dipped on the bird. 

 Breary Marsh is a small carr woodland on the other side of Golden Acre Park to Adel Dam, a stream flows from here down through the park and into the Dam area. The species list for this area is pretty similar to that of the Dam, although I did record a new one this month, first Song Thrush for the patch.

Gt spot hiding from Sparrowhawk

Highlights from 2014 include watching 500+ Black-headed Gulls drop onto the lake at Adel Dam to spend 5 minutes there before taking flight and disappearing completely, having a female Sparrowhawk catch a Great Tit on the feeders right in front of me, being able to photograph a stoat in the reserve and best of all seeing the Peregrine glide over the trees at Adel before it zoomed up into the atmosphere - a patch first. 

Running down the species list I had 12 waterfowl, including a site first Shelduck, 4 raptors, 4 gulls, 3 warblers, 4 tit, 5 corvids, 1 owl, 4 finches, 3 thrushes. Missing from the list Reed Warbler, Sparrows, Green Woodpecker and Pochard all of which I found in 2013.

Mandarin duck - another 2 pointer

 So far this year as I said earlier I am well on way to matching last year's total and have scored with 2 more patch firsts, namely Song Thrush and Golden Plover. The latter species being the first time for 15 years or so that I have recorded them inside the Leeds boundaries. I have just heard that the lesser 'pecker is being seen again so I can foresee several more hours spent at Adel.

An Urban/Suburban Patch

This is my first post on urban patching in North Leeds, or what the townie can do to enhance his birding. I took up the PWC gauntlet for the first time this year after spending a fair bit of time last year sussing out the location of an area to call 'my patch'. By canny use of the mapping tool on the PWC website I was able to get the bulk of Eccup Reservoir and a couple of decent stands of oldish woodland (Adel Dam and Breary Marsh) into my 3 square kilometers, it also included one of the more popular parks (Golden Acre) but that couldn't be helped.

Adel Dam looking towards the lake

Eccup Reservoir looking West from dam wall

 So far I've made less than 2 dozen visits due to circumstances beyond my control but have managed to get to 67 species for a princely 69 points, considering I'd got a list of 58 species over 30 years of occasionally visiting the same area prior to the challenge I think that is a fairly positive result. Most of my visits have been early morning to avoid conflict with dog-walkers but this has paid off in that I have found a couple of Shelduck on Golden Acre Park lake at 06.30 on a March Sunday morning that had flown by 07.00 never to be seen again, a site first. At Eccup I found a small group of Ringed Plover before 09.00 that again had flown when I passed on the way back to the car, I was hissed at by a partially fledged Tawny Owl chick. At Adel Dams I've been lucky enough to see a male Sparrowhawk catching it's breakfast, male Great Tit if you are interested, a pair of Treecreeper investigating loose bark for nest sites and best of all watched a Stoat scurrying across an open glade.

Stoat

There are a few species I expected to see but haven't, most noticeably, Green Woodpecker and Pochard, a species I didn't expect to see was the Grey Wagtail that overwintered by the foulest bit of mud and water at Adel Dam.

Wagtail heaven.

Eccup reservoir has been a bit of a let down due to the visibility of the water being very limited due partly to the maintenance work on the supply pipes lowering the water level dramatically but more to the vegetation that has been allowed to spring up inside the boundary fence, this making it inaccessible to 'pruning'. Most of the records for the site this year have been of birds seen through gaps in an almost complete wall of trees and shrubs, which has been a bit frustrating sometimes. 

What you are up against at Eccup

However last Sunday, having an hour spare at the end of the afternoon I did my usual route along the South edge of the reservoir. I was bemoaning the lack of visibility as per normal on the way out but on the way back to the car the vegetation inside the fence was brilliant, as a flock of mixed passerines worked their way through it, giving me a site record in Treecreeper and loads of Blue, Great and Long-tailed Tits, Chaffinches, a Chiffchaff and at least 3 Wrens.

What has been an eye-opener for me has been the sheer abundance of birds that I normally associate with the countryside, breeding Curlew within the Leeds boundary along with Oystercatcher and Buzzards (at least 3 birds on occasions).

I know I'm probably never going to get a bird that will be in with a chance of the Bresser and Forest Optics Best Find prize but I can live in hope.