Today was winter bird race day. A simple enough task – find and positively identify as many different bird species as you can in one day in Northumberland. Teams have four members and three must record a species for it to be added to the list. Then, the day is rounded off with an enjoyable social gathering at the pub as each team declares their total for the day; what was missed and shouldn’t have been? what was found unexpectedly?
Our team had had no pre-planning or preparation so were weren’t exactly brimming with confidence. The tremulous hooting of (1) Tawny Owl at 07:00 and the flight calls of distant (101) Pink-footed Geese at 17:00 bookended our 2009 challenge, with gems such as Kingfisher, Nuthatch and Peregrine in between. Two teams failed to reach treble figures on a bitterly cold day when a lot of ‘easy’ birds didn’t appear on a number of lists, and the winning total of 113 (congratulations to Tom, Muriel, Neil and John) was 13 species shy of the Northumberland January record. Here’s to 2010 and the next one (of course there’s the May bird race as well, but that’s a very serious 24 hours of birding and a whole different kettle of fish).