Exploring my inner geek

Every day that I'm at Conwy, I typically start with some birdwatching. I 'open up' the reserve, unlocking the hides and checking the trails, and perhaps doing jobs as switching on the water pump or checking some of our mammal monitoring stations. And, of course, I note the birds that are around, so that we have some information for visitors arriving at the Visitor Centre when we open at 9.30am.

This first hour of the day is my time, a chance to get my thoughts in order, and to enjoy the reserve. For the last few years, I have used the excellent BirdTrack smartphone app to record my sightings, which has the benefit of contributing to a massive citizen-science set of data that scientists can use to look at changes in bird abundance over time. Click here to read more about BirdTrack, and how you can make your sightings count.

I've made 700 lists so far, and because I follow the same route every day, taking about the same time to do so (50 minutes), and at the same time of day (from around 7.50am), the sightings have some consistency to them. I won't pretend this is science, but those records allow my inner geek to emerge, so I hope you'll indulge me as I look back on 2017 through my BirdTrack sightings.

On all the graphs below, the x-axis is the percentage of lists (i.e. morning walks) on which the species was seen or heard. So, if I saw a bird every single day of the year, it would show at 100%. By looking at the proportion of visits in which a bird is recorded, you can compare individual months between years, or the whole year.

Let's start with the waterbirds. It's been a good year for gadwalls, with birds present at Conwy for many more visits (orange line = 2017) than the average of the previous years (blue blocks = 2013-16).

The long-staying female scaup (first one, now two) through the autumn is evident on the graph below, but it also shows that scaup are not that unusual at Conwy, occurring on at least 10% of days through the winter - and some stay for a while.

You can't tell a great deal from just five years' sightings, but it's interesting to see how sightings can change over a fairly short timescale. The graphs below show that Canada geese are becoming less regular (they are far from a year-round resident, being absent through the autumn), as are goldeneyes, a trend we're seeing across the UK.

It's great to see little grebes more regularly here, and they have fledged chicks in the last two summers. By contrast, great-crested grebes have been more intermittent with their breeding, and don't usually stick around during the winter.

Wader sightings are fairly stable, but we have noticed a few changes, such as ringed plovers becoming less frequent, but whimbrels increasing - the latter visit us for just a few weeks in the spring and autumn, breaking their journey between west Africa and Iceland.

Among the songbirds, lesser whitethroat and grey wagtail both occurred on a greater proportion of my visits than in previous years. The seasonal chart for lesser whitethroat in 2017 (orange) follows the typical pattern of previous years (blue), but birds were seen or heard on more dates. Grey wagtail, on the other hand, became much more obvious in the autumn, perhaps because a pair bred nearby in the summer, and the whole family was feeding on the reserve until very recently.

White wagtails - like whimbrels - are passage visitors, feeding on the saltmarsh during their migration to and from Iceland. It's usually a spring visitor at Conwy (blue blocks), but this year (orange line), the peak was in the autumn, with small numbers still visiting in October.

Finally, our finches are doing well.  Greenfinches have been having a tough time nationally, with breeding numbers having halved in Wales since 1995 (Breeding Bird Survey). My data isn't so long-term, but they seem to be holding their own, and we have seen very few with Trichomonosis, a disease that has jumped from pigeons to finches.

Goldfinches are another species doing well here, and they are evidently finding sufficient food on the reserve throughout the year, whereas they used to leave us for a period in late winter, presumably to go and find seed in neighbouring gardens.

Finally, it's been wonderful to see bullfinches more regularly around the reserve this year, with counts of 30+ birds on some days. The chart below shows the chances of bumping into a bullfinch on my daily walk has more than doubled in the last five years.

I'll be out with my binoculars and BirdTrack app. first thing tomorrow too, starting my lists for 2018.

If you've visited Conwy this year, thank you so much for your support, and we hope you'll enjoy more days exploring the reserve and discovering nature with us in the new year.