Keeping Count

A phrase that keeps on coming up again and again in many a birders blog, website or conversation is the word “tick”. Birders always seem to be ticking off something or other all the time it seems. It must be a bit bewildering for the non-birders of the world. I always said to my family that if I started “ticking” birds then shoot me, as it is a sure fire descent into geekiness .. I lasted one year. I started keeping three lists from the start of 2011.

Let me say from the outset I have no desire to get into the “400 Club” an elite band of bird watchers that have seen over four hundred species of bird in the British Isles.  Other than my garden list, my lists are just kept for fun; I don’t submit them anywhere other than my little birding diary I keep each year. I am also a little bit of a statto at heart too.

I have participated in the BTO Garden Birdwatch for close to two years now. If you have done the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch weekends that happen twice a year, the principle is exactly the same, you simply spend an hour counting maximum numbers of each species that visit your garden each week, and then submit them on an online form or a paper which you post off at the end of each quarter. You can get some interesting facts and figures from looking back at your historical data. For example, my only ever present bird that I have counted each week for over eighty weeks is the Nuthatch. Not the bird most people would expect to be a constant. It is a stroke of luck that the Nuthatch is my favourite woodland bird, the Kingfisher of the woods I like to call it! I can also see, by looking down the columns, that House Sparrows have definitely fared well over the mild winter, with numbers definitely up on this time last year. There are some notable ticks missing from 2012 that were around for weeks this time last year. Bramblings simply didn’t stick around this year; I only saw them for a few days shortly after Christmas. This was a pity, as they are wonderfully pretty little finches that were everywhere last year. One of my star birds that were drawn in by the cold winter of 2011 was a pair of Goldcrests; it’s another 2012 bird I have yet to tick anywhere. In two years I have lived at this address I have counted forty species of bird that have visited my garden.

My other lists are my year list and my life list. As I said, I never go in pursuit of ticks (well nearly never, the Great White Egret of a few weeks back I blogged about, and Goldcliff’s Glossy Ibis are two exceptions), it is more a personal record of what I have seen this year and since I have been bird watching. My year list is hovering just below 100 species, but with the influx of summer migrants arriving at the moment, it should push into three figures in the next few weeks.

Keeping lists does lead to some amusing scenarios. We have both Great Spotted Woodpeckers and Green Woodpeckers where I live near Pontypridd. Despite this I ended up seeing my first Green Woodpecker of the year in 2011 at RSPB HQ in Sandy outside The Lodge in mid-October! I saw my first one for 2012 in the copse at Newport Wetlands in January; I have been practically tripping over them since! My year list for 2012 currently stands at ninety two species, and my life list around the one hundred and twenty mark. I consider this not a bad start for someone who just logs what he sees and doesn’t go looking for birds to tick. I enjoy the fun of building these lists.

Why not start keeping a garden list or a reserve list to begin with and see how you go? It does make for an interesting historical record to look back on as time goes on. How soon did you see or hear your first cuckoo from one year to the next? You could look back on that day when you ticked off all of the birds of prey at your local patch, as I did during one Starling murmuration back in late autumn at Newport Wetlands. To see Peregrine, Sparrowhawk, Kestrel and Hen Harrier all within the space of half an hour is something that stays with you for a long time!