Thursday, January 01, 2015

And the winner is ?

At the start of the year three of us took up Gordon Denison’s challenge to see how many species we could see in 2014. The record held by Darrel Prest stood at 147, a high number to beat. This years winner unsurprisingly was Dave Franz with a score of 149, yours truly ended the year on 142 and Dave Sutcliffe on 139. 2014 also saw the highest number of species recorded, so far 163 beating 1996s total by one. The year will mainly be remembered by the number of rare and scarce species which turned up, namely Eider, Hoopoe, Montagus Harrier, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Wryneck, Woodlark, Richard’s Pipit, 2 Great Northern Divers, Rough-legged Buzzard, Iceland Gull etc. If 2015 is half as good it will be considered a good year.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done to Dave F-good work. A good effort by Nick & Dave S also.

David Sutcliffe said...

Well done Nick for keeping tabs on everything. You do a great job as Recorder. Dotterel as well

AndyC said...

A great score 149 and well done to all 3 of you for finding such great local birds this year..

heavy birder said...

There were so many good birds I forgot about that one. Kittiwake Knot, Hobbies, Marsh and Hen Harriers in good supply but me and DF just Couldnt latch on to a single Tree Pipit, one to watch out for????

Jeff Cox said...

An abolutely cracking year and very well done to Dave, Nick and Dave for getting out there and not only seeing the birds but more importantly finding most of them too.

Steve Blacksmith said...

Well done to Dave Franz. He doesn't just do the rare novelties, but also faithfully takes his place in the rota filling up the Tree Sparrow feeders at Jay House Lane.

Good competition provided there also from NCD and DJS !