Patchwork Challenge

Here's a quick refresher on the three things you need to do....apologies for the laziness, this is an email I've sent out to a few folk but theres no point in not putting it up here as it's pretty helpful! First, read this and make sure we've explained the rules properly http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-patchwork-challenge.html Next, read this and fill out the spreadsheet in the link... http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/housekeeping.html Once that is done, download your 'scorecard' here http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/how-to-get-most-out-of-your-scoring.html If you have a comparative score (i.e. past 2 year lists from the patch) you can stick them into copies of the scorecard and average them to come up with your comparative score. If, like you say, you're averages are unrealistic, then just post what you reckon will be a realistic score. A word of warning, the scorecar...

This post is the first in a series as we start to introduce the patches to everyone. I thought I would start with the Norfolk patches for two reasons, firstly my patch is there and secondly 16 of the first 70 patches are from there. Now, I know what your thinking and that all the patches are from North Norfolk 'hot spots' but in truth there is a good mix of north and east coast patches as well as a few inland ones. We'll start in the north, Salthouse, Gramborough Hill, Felbrigg and Cromer all covered but no patches to the west of the north coast yet. Below are the patches of Salthouse and Cromer.  Cromer local patch Salthouse local patch The east coast is well represented with six entrants, although it only constitutes 3 patches. The Winterton collective have stuck to their parish which measured in just under the maximum allowed and there will be up to four of them competing there. Neighbouring either side of their patch will be a Sea Paling patc...

Follow this link to get your hands on the Patchwork Challenge official scoring spreadsheet! If that doesn't work there are details at the bottom of this post.... You'll need your own version of this so when it is open, click file and select download...and save it somewhere! The spreadsheet is dead easy to use. When January 1st comes, all you need to do is enter the birds you see in the 'Spp" column, as and when you see them, along with the date. The spreadsheet will add the values for each species. When you are lucky enough to find a species worth three points or more, put an 'F' in the find column. The magical spreadsheet will then calculate the number of species you've seen and the number of points you've accumulated. Beware that the spreadsheet gets a little lippy when you enter something incorrectly spelled...there is a 'list' tab where you can look things up if needs be....but dont alter anything on the list page as you will mess up ...

In what we hope to make a regular feature, Stewart Sexton describes his local patch, Howick, in Northumberland. Cheers Stewart! We moved to the village of Howick in the spring of 2009. Its rural, east coast location and chocolate box image were not least when it came to the decision of ‘should we move house’.  The village consists of 18 houses, 1 village hall, 4 street lights and a phone box, set about 300mtrs from the scenic Northumberland coast. This east coast location, with Lord Howick’s estate with arboretum, pond, meadows, ditches and rougher areas make it an excellent local patch for any birder. The ability to walk for five minutes to a seawatch carrying full kit and deckchair will always be a novelty that I hope I will never get used to. When we moved, a little investigation did turn up some bird finding potential here. For example, in May 1886 a summer plumaged male Little Bittern was found. It was suspected that he had a mate but breeding was never p...

Things are really picking up pace with the patchwork challenge now. We're applying the last few tweaks to the spreadsheet, so soon it should be available. We were going to email it to everyone, but that seems far too much like hard work, so instead we'll put a link on the blog and keep you all posted as to when it has gone up. In the meantime can we trouble you for a few minutes of your time? To make things a little easier for us, it would be grand if you could help us with a bit of 'personal patch' info... In the spreadsheet  (URL is at the bottom of the post in case there are issues with the link) would you be able to update any of the first three columns with any details we may have missed? We could also do with some info in the following columns... If your patch is inland, stick a Y in the inland column. If you have a blog/website you'd like us to provide a link for, please paste an address in the appropriate cell. If you will be able to post a compa...

So, who are the crazy people organising this challenge? Well to be honest we were expecting a maximum of 20 patches and thought "ah, it'll be easy to organise". So here we are less than a week after starting up and the number of patches is 55 and growing! We've both been involved in competitive patching for a few years, each with slightly different rules. We decided we wanted to try and make a national competition and combined the rules. So here we are: Mark Lewis (aka Fat Paul Scholes) I've been birding for as long as I can remember. I started when I was about 5, because my dad took it up, and when you're 5, whatever your dad does is cool. If only I'd known.... I birded around Durham (with frequent visits to the Tees marshes, Hartlepool, and the Northumberland coast) until the age of 18, at which point I decided to spend a couple of years wasting time and money getting kicked out of Aberdeen university for never turning up. Aberdeen has got a 24 hou...

WARNING - the text below contains levels of geekiness that some readers will find offensive and all readers will find boring. I’ve been actively keeping a patch list for 5 years now, although it was only recently that I decided to keep it all in my amazing multicolured spreadsheet. This is different from the ‘Patchwork’ spreadsheet (that contenders have received, or will receive soon) in that it doesn’t calculate any scores. Instead, it allows me to compare the ‘anatomy’ of each year’s list,  noting how many species I see every year, which species I’ve seen in one year, two years, three years etc, and showing which months have been most productive. Over the course of the last five years I’ve averaged 127.2 species per year (assuming I finish on what I’m on now). This is a little lower than perhaps it should be as for the first few years I posted relatively low scores due to the fact that I lived a 45 minute walk away, rather than the 3 minute walk I ha...

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....