Competitive Birding

This morning I arranged to let Nick Barlow have some line drawings for his forthcoming 2011 Marsh Lane Bird Report. I had heard that the Marsh Lane birders were doing an all day list in friendly competition with Belvide Res in Staffs and Upton Warren in Worcs, so I was pretty confident I would find Nick there.

I arrived at about 10.15, and with no sign of Nick and frequent heavy showers sweeping across from the west I decided to cower in Car Park hide and spend my time seeing a few birds which are unlikely to turn up at Morton Bagot.

How nice to have the luxury of a hide from which to take a few pictures. The following potential Morton Bagot megas were seen;

Dream on

Not going to Morton Bagot for their holidays

and some birds were actually close;

Lapwing approaching the hide

Meanwhile, hanging around the car-park got me my first Swift (and embarrassingly my first 50 or so Sand Martins) of the year, followed by another bird which would be very welcome on the patch, a Garden Warbler.

Nick arrived and I was almost swept up into the excitement of the competition. They were on 73 species, but Upton Warren had been on 80 an hour earlier. I then discovered that a Yellowhammer I had heard flying over the car-park was another day tick.

Sadly I had to drag myself away, but the results are now in.

Marsh Lane 80
Upton Warren 89
Belvide 91

It always seems to end up in this order, but there is no doubt that this competitive day, the nearest birding comes to sport, was great fun for all the "teams" taking part.