Friday December 22 - Mapping

 Another December week comes to a close without me having much to show for it. To stave off any despondency I have developed a strategy of local birding which involves counting and mapping the distribution of birds wintering locally. It is pretty much the same as taking part in BTO Atlas work, but I may be too old and knackered (or dead) by the time the BTO announces the next one, so why wait? 

In fact my own survey maps birds to one square kilometre level, not tetrads. So in theory it should be more detailed.

Here is the coverage of two winter's fieldwork.

Purple squares are winter visits, grey squares are summer only

Obviously my presentation is about as low-tech as you can get, but you can see that I have been birding nearly everywhere in my Circle since the 2021/22 winter.

On Wednesday my latest two purple squares were at Alcester Heath, just west of King's Coughton. It was a cloudy morning with periods of rain, so no photos were taken. Once again it was largely on arable farmland. I counted about 500 winter thrushes which were about 50/50 Redwings and Fieldfares, and just a handful of Yellowhammers, Linnets, and Red-legged Partridges. 

I thought I'd show you my Yellowhammer map as it neatly demonstrates how their distribution seems to be slipping to the south and south-east edge of the Circle. 

The hatched circle is the approximate position of Redditch

The interesting thing for me is the absence of Yellowhammers from the farmland to the north of Redditch. Obviously these are just my own records and I've only covered two winters so far. In other words it's a work in progress, and I remain hopeful that more will be found.

I plan to keep at it for eight more winters to get a full picture.

What about the year list? Well I'm still doing one, and I missed a potential tick yesterday. While Lyn and I were sitting in a restaurant in Stratford, Mark Islip was discovering a White-fronted Goose at Arrow Valley Lake. I just about made it to the lake by dusk, but the bird had left to the south at 16.00. It had been with the Tundra Bean Goose which is still resident at Upper Bittell (just outside my Circle), so maybe it has been there.

With no further news this morning I decided to head down to the Kinwarton area for a final attempt to add Little Owl to my list. There was again no sign of it. It's amazing how this species has disappeared locally without anyone really noticing. Twenty years ago you just took it for granted that you would see two or three a year without making any particular effort.

I also strolled around Alcester hoping to find some Waxwings. I couldn't find any, so it looks as though my year-list will not advance beyond the 142 species it has been stuck on since the Goldeneye at Earlswood at the beginning of last month.