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January round-up 2026

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Hello from the Patchwork Challenge team! We sincerely hope you have enjoyed taking part in the first month of #PWC2026! If you have yet to sign up and are interested in joining this year's competition, then please do by following this link:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iZORva8WZXRiaCZcQUE9CNmog3k0EhnhW-GflGqNYoA/edit?usp=sharing There has been a brilliant arrival of winter wildfowl with stacks of Eurasian White-fronted Geese arriving into Britain and onto many patches! There has also been a good spread of other winter species recorded on patches with Barnacle and Tundra Bean Geese, Smews and Scaups, Glaucous and Iceland Gulls, plus many other goodies, maybe best of all being a Great-tailed Grackle found in the Estuarine mini-league!  February can produce some exciting birding with the first inklings of spring coming, the first north-bound groups of Pink-footed Geese, Meadow Pipits and Skylarks can be seen going through northern Britain patches, re-orientating Tundr...
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Best Find 2025

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Hello from the Patchwork Challenge team! Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry for PWC2025's Best Find. There are some superb entries and we have thoroughly enjoyed reading through them all. Now it is over to the public to vote for the lucky winners! Please take your time to read through these submissions and cast your vote at the bottom of the page.  Sean O'Hara,  Hoylake and Meols 3km My undoubted highlight for 2025 on my local patch Hoylake/Meols was finding a Black Scoter off Hoylake on March 5th. A first for Wirral and Cheshire. There are large Scoter flocks offshore in the winter months but they can only be seen by walking out to the tideline at low water. A walk of over a mile across the sands.  In previous winters there have regularly been small groups of Long-tailed Duck and occasionally Velvet Scoter and Surf Scoter.  Conditions have to be right with little swell otherwise scrutinising the flocks is impossible. I was about to call it a day after 1.5 ...
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2025 Patchwork Challenge Wrap Up!

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Hello from the Patchwork Challenge team!  Well what a year 2025 was! So many patches recorded so many great birds nationally, with just in the first half of the year alone the following birds being recorded: Baikal Teal, White-winged Scoter, Black Scoter, Ferruginous Duck, Ross's Gull, American Herring Gull, Caspian Tern, Pallid Harrier, Scop's Owl, Western and Eastern Subalpine Warblers, Iberian Chiffchaff and Pallas's Reed Bunting! Not all of these are from well watched coastal sites, showing that as long as you work a patch, you have the oppurtunity to fiind anything just about anywhere! You have to be out there to find it...  Amy Robjohns had a big flock of Eurasian White-fronted Geese, part of the national influx during the later part of December! We would like to extend a massive thank you to everyone that took part in the challenge. It has been fantastic to follow your patches  through the scoresheet, Bluesky and Twitter and we really appreciate how much you have a...
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