The only instruction I gave myself was that each bird I observed had to be within walking distance from my house, with the caveat of “sensible distance” and not a 10-day walking expedition. This idea of a yearlong bird watch starting in June 2022 came about as part of a mental health design to be included for my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design that I went on to complete in November 2022. Living in Richmond, North Yorkshire there was little need to subject myself to the additional stress of driving to different locations to discover birds when I already knew that I would have plenty of birds to search for in and around the town. Now as 2023 draws to a close I’ve completed one whole year of counting the different bird species spotted around the town and I’m now nearly seven months into year two which is already on track to top last year’s list.

Birds and Briton

With 628 species of birds as of June 2022, the latest list published on the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) website recorded in a wild, or apparently wild, state in Britain, as recognised by the British Ornithologists’ Union. A couple of things stand out regarding that last statement, firstly 628 different species of birds were spotted in Britain, and secondly the British Ornithologists’ Union. Let’s quickly move away from the second, a union for British Ornithologists’, whatever next. Stepping back to the first, 628 species recorded in Britain, as of October 2022, the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World lists 10,906 bird species. Hopefully, this is a more accurate list than an article published in 2021 in National Geographic answering the question “How many birds are there in the world?” Now I admit, I didn’t do very well at maths in school but with the estimate provided, I’d say the finger-in-the-air rule applied here. Answer: “New research estimates there are between 50 billion and 430 billion birds on Earth.” This relates to birds in total, not bird species but I rest my case on that one.

With 628 species out of 10,906, Briton for its size has a fair amount of bird species to go at. Admittedly as somebody who is not part of the British Ornithologists’ Union my knowledge of birds may often be questioned but even for me, reading through the 628 species list there are a few that rather stand out and suspect may just have been spotted the morning after the British Ornithologists’ Union summer garden party by a member who woke up in the flower bed. Ruby-throated Hummingbird! Please can the person who spotted this little gem please stand up? Yes, I thought as much. 

Richmond, North Yorkshire

With regards to habitat, Richmond has a rich variety of these for birds to choose from, we have ancient woodlands, commercial forests, riverbanks, streams, meadows, pasture, hedgerows, moorland, heather moor, a few ponds, small lakes, along with lots of gardens and all those habitats in between.

The landscape around the town provides some exceptional views, we are in Lower Swale Dale bestowing Richmond as the gateway to the North Yorkshire Dales. It may all sound a little romantic with medieval castles, waterfalls, and old abandoned Abbeys. Richmond is a town steeped in history that can tell many a story but alas it is birds I’m in search of so the legends of the ghosts of the town will have to wait.

I was born and raised in Richmond and have both walked and worked in the surrounding countryside as well as many an hour spent at the river fishing. I know these lands well and where to go to forage for wild foods or spot common lizards. I have places where I leave trail cams to film badgers, but it is the local birds I probably know of the most. Setting myself on a yearlong bird search in and around Richmond was perhaps a little self-indulgent but what the heck I couldn’t think of anything better to go in search of. 

Equipment

Binoculars were the only item on my list of things I needed to equip myself with for my quest to observe as many different bird species as possible around the town. I did spend a rather large amount of time figuring out which pair of binoculars to buy but it was time well spent settling on the Hawke Frontier ED X 8x42. I mention this because like everything these days it’s hard to know what to buy and this pair of binoculars have proved to be excellent.    

Another item that was not part of my equipment list but these past few months after purchasing it has become a most excellent travel companion and that is a backpack for my DSLR camera. Yet again I found myself researching backpacks of all things so I will save the reader time learning about camera backpacks and just say buy the Lowepro Flipside Trek BP 250 AW. I’ve never had a proper backpack so this made my life so much easier when out walking and I can put my binoculars in its side pocket allowing me to walk around without looking like a birdwatcher with binoculars around my neck, heavens forbid to be thought of as one of those birdwatcher folks, that bunch of weirdos, geeking out over birds and birding equipment.

In the second year, I started to use the Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell Lab on my phone. This is an excellent tool to help ID birds from their calls. I’m not too bad with the more obvious bird calls but this has certainly helped me to hone in on all the birds that are calling together. The accuracy is very good if you have it set to the correct location. Once you get your ear in you will be able to pick out bird calls before the app and confirm your accuracy against that of the app. Just to add there is nothing geeky about this, it’s just training your ear to bird calls, a very useful skill to have and one I no doubt will find a use for one day. A few times I do question the results but overall, the app is very good.  

A Lose Plan

My plan was never to go out to sit and wait for birds just so I could add them to my list and move on. The whole point of my year-long bird search was to get me out walking more often and further afield or woodland for that matter.

I enjoy getting out early in the morning walking both in summer during the light mornings as well as in the winter mornings when it’s still dark. In the past, during the darkness of winter, I would walk around the town often at 4 am. For those who know Richmond, in the dark, the old town buildings alleyways and the castle make for a magical experience. Sadly, getting the police spotlight put on me, and then only for them to zoom off in their van as I walked straight towards them to see what the heck, they were playing at took the enjoyment out of walking around the town. This wasn’t the first time the police hassled me in the town, so I then took to walking the country roads. This was a little better but once again this time at 4.30 am in the dark a mile from Richmond dressed for walking the police stopped to ask if I was lost, and then started with the usual questions, are you from around here? It’s a bit early to be out walking, isn’t it? Clearly, if I was up to no good, I wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere dressed like a bloody walker strolling up a road, would I not be hiding from any cars, and I’d be dressed like a ninja? When I asked the concerned policeman why wouldn’t I be out walking on such a beautiful morning as this? His facial expression shifted, and I was officially categorized as a harmless nutter, whereupon they hurriedly drove off to hassle another easy target, or should I say, combat crime.

The police aside, walking these country roads in the early hours of the morning is safe, with only a few cars and these are generally the same people each week heading home or to work around the same time. Some mornings there are no cars, which makes the roads excellent places to observe birds and other wildlife with the bonus that you can creep up on things, unlike walking in a wood where everything is on full alert when I walk over dry leaves never mind if you are thoughtless enough to snap a twig under your foot.

For my weekend, and any other time that I have off work my morning walk takes in around ten miles of countryside. It varies from season to season and on the weather somewhat as to which way I head back home. A respectable distance like this provides me with a good range of habitats to observe many species of birds, and this was my plan to continue my walks and then add additional areas where I might spot something different.  

Mythical creatures

I should talk about “mythical creatures”. When I use the term mythical as much as I would like to describe seeing unicorns, dragons, fairies, and such like. Sadly, I’m referring to animals and birds spotted in the wrong place.

I good example of this is when I was in Amsterdam just after Christmas quite a few years ago. It was dusk as I walked out of a local coffee house when a flock of green parakeets flew over my head. Now this made me stop and look around to see if anybody else had just witnessed what I had seen. Evidently, nobody had so I slowly continued my walk back to a coffee house nearer to where I was staying in case any other African creatures appeared in the city and I needed to get back to the safety of my hotel quickly.

A few days later after leaving a different coffee house, I was walking through Vondelpark enjoying the winter morning sun when as clear as day I saw a green parakeet fly over me. This once again got my attention somewhat, was I the only one seeing green parakeets in the park or were these birds so common nobody else paid attention to them? After an hour of walking the Park, my conclusion was that the green parakeets were real and not created by my imagination and they must be a common everyday thing in the city.

Smartphones were still at the Blackberry stage back then and something thankfully I never had so I had to wait until I got back to England to get on my computer and check out the parakeet situation in Amsterdam. I can confirm that feral rose-ringed parakeets are a thing in Amsterdam. 

A closer-to-home experience with another “mythical creature” was when I was driving over the bridge in Skeeby coming home from work one evening when in the beck I spotted a little egret. I wasn’t long back from a trip to India where the fields are full of these beautiful white birds but spotting one in Skeeby Beck was just too much to comprehend.

Obviously, I didn’t tell anybody that I had thought I saw a Little Egret fishing in the beck, people think I’m mad enough without adding to it with stories of small white herons in Richmondshire. A few days later, there it was again, a Little Egret. This time I slowed the car down and made sure I got a good look at it and sure enough, it was a Little Egret. The following week I spotted 3 of them one morning while driving to work. This confirmed I was not going crazy.

Now it’s common to see Little Egrets down the river but when I first spotted one, I had to question what the heck I saw. I’d never heard of anybody seeing a Little Egret in North Yorkshire since its 16th-century disappearance.

I add “mythical creatures” into this article because this is what energises me every time, I wake up at 3.30 a.m. on a weekend and think today could be that “Amsterdam moment” day all over again. The day that I get to spot a bird or animal in the wrong place or at the wrong time of year. I do have a very trustworthy friend in town who not only spotted a black panther but tracked it to make sure it didn’t double back on him and his dog, but this is a story for another day, I add it here to highlight the fact that “mythical creatures” are real.

And so, the quest begins.

Admittedly, the first few walks were an exercise in bulk data gathering. I walked where I knew I would be able to add a lot of birds to my list quickly. I would check what I had seen and think, kingfisher, dipper, grey wagtail, goosander and then head down the river and add those to the list straight away. There is nothing wrong with starting with a little success on any quest.

As the weeks turned into months and my list slowed down things got much more exciting when I spotted a bird that was not on my list. With a conscious focus on not letting myself become a list geek, I would continue enjoying my walks even if I went weeks without spotting any additional birds that had yet to appear on my list. Like everything in life, there is always an exception, and this came in the form of the Cuckoo, where I perhaps got a little geeky.

Of all the birds that frequent these lands, it is the Cuckoo that captures my attention the most. A plain-looking bird it may be but it’s one of the great wonders of the bird world. Our Common Cuckoo is one of a select species of bird that has a very unusual trait. Along with Indigbirds, Whydahs, and Honeyguides in Africa, Cowbirds, Old World Cuckoos, Black-headed Ducks, and some New World Cuckoos in the Americas, are all interspecific brood parasites. For the Common Cuckoo, this means they lay their eggs in the nest of a different species of bird. There is also intraspecific brood parasitism that has been recorded in 234 bird species. Here we see extra-pair mating resulting in males outside the pair bond of a monogamous bird species siring offspring and avoiding the parental investment in raising them.

For our Common Cuckoo, we have different races that target a specific species of bird and lay an egg into the host bird's nest mimicking the colour and design of the host bird’s egg. As it’s nature there is always the exception, Dunnocks it seems will happily sit on an egg of a different colour. Other birds commonly targeted by the Common Cuckoo are Meadow Pipits and Reed warblers. I have yet to observe a host bird feeding a young Cuckoo, what I have observed is when the male Cuckoo is calling his characteristic goo-ko call, (it’s only the male that using this call) flocks of Meadow Pipits are always mobbing him, this leads me to suspect the females around this area prefer to lay their eggs in Meadow Pipit nests. 

Cuckoo’s aside there are other birds that travel from distant lands to bread in our countryside or to feed during the winter months. On my list of birds observed the breading arrivals tend to like to arrive from Africa. We have Willow Warblers from Southern Africa, Redstarts from trans-Saharan Africa, Swallows from South Africa, Common Sandpipers, House Martins, Swifts from Africa, Sand Martins from south of Sahara Africa, Chiffchaffs from Southern Europe and North Africa, Spotted Flycatchers from Africa going as far south as Namibia, around 7,000km away, and of course our friend the Common Cuckoo from Central Africa.

In winter we see the arrival of the Redwings from Northern and Eastern Europe, Fieldfares from Fennoscandia, Western Russia, and Eastern Europe, and Bramblings from Fennoscandia.

We also see some of our local bird populations grow in number during the winter months with Chaffinch populations swelling with large numbers of migrants arriving from Fennoscandia, many additional Blackbirds arrive from Northern Europe, Starling Numbers increase dramatically during the winter months when birds arrive from Northern Europe, and Woodcock arrive from Finland and Russia. When you spend a bit of time researching British birds, most of our resident breeders are joined during the winter months by visitors of the same species. Just to blow your mind even more this includes some Goldcrests. The Goldcrest is the United Kingdom’s smallest breeding bird and additional Goldcrests head over from Fennoscandia to spend the winter here. How something so small that you only see hopping from branch to branch could manage to fly so far bewilders me beyond belief.   

Apparently, our local Blackcaps depart for Southern Europe and are replaced by Blackcaps from Central Europe. I’ve just seen a Stonechat, it’s late December so this bird did not head off to Southern Europe or North Africa as some of them do. We also have some partial migrants with the Grey Wagtails jumping ship if it gets very cold flying further south as far away as North Africa. Also, Meadow Pipits may head to southern Europe and North Africa.

I do find it rather fascinating how many of our local birds move around the world migrating. Already the Swallows will be starting to follow the Spring as they head north from overwintering at the Cape, South Africa. To imagine so many of the birds we see in summer will have spent time around elephants, rhinoceroses, and crocodiles, or been flushed out of trees by playing monkeys? Just picture what a swift must think when it arrives in England at one of our safari parks and spots a giraffe, an “Amsterdam moment” for sure.

Year one standouts

Despite increasing populations of Red Kites in Yorkshire and around Gateshead, they are a rare site around Richmond so observing one at first light in May foraging for carrion low over a grass field near Feldom on the topside of Richmond was an impressive sight. What I didn’t want this Red Kite to be was my big hit to end my year with, I was still searching for a Cuckoo. That came a week later when I finally got to see the bird with the most distinctive call of all the birds.

Going back thirty years when I was working as a gamekeeper putting pens up on the rearing field, Cuckoos would drive us crazy with their constant goo-ko’s all day long when they were looking for the lady Cuckoos. If I knew then that in the future this call would become a rare noise to behold with wonder, I would never have moaned at them. As a child, we seemed to have Cuckoo’s calling everywhere around the town. Now you must search them out with some pre-knowledge.

After week upon week of looking for Cuckoos in an area, I knew them to be from previous years and not too far from where I saw the Red Kite, I sat myself down at the top corner of a replanted forest clearing. The morning sky was a cloudless Jay blue, the air warm and filled with birdsong. Through my binoculars, I scanned the far side of the vast clearing and spotted a dark Sparrowhawk shape flying towards me with a slightly slower wing beat than a Sparrowhawk. The male Cuckoo flew right next to me and landed in a tall spouse tree whereupon before it could get his first goo-ko call out he was mobbed by Meadow Pipits, not that he seemed bothered by them. This was one of those magical moments when life couldn’t get any better. Goo-ko, goo-ko, goo-ko he charmed into the morning air in search of love. Not so impressive to the Meadow Pipets who increased in number knowing instinctively this chap who came dressed in Sparrowhawk plumage was up to no good.

Another contender for standouts was the Little Owl, a nonnative species that was successfully introduced from Europe in the late 1800s by ornithologist Lord Lilford on his Lilford Hall estate near Oundle in Northamptonshire and then followed by Edmund Meade-Waldo another ornithologist at Stonewall Park near Edenbridge, Kent. The little owl has subsequently colonised England and parts of Wales. Of interest I’m sure you will agree, Lord Lilford was one of the eight founders of the British Ornithologists' Union in 1858 and its president from 1867 until he died in 1896. Edmund Meade-Waldo was Vice-President of the British Ornithologists' Union in 1923.

Little Owl populations across the country are in decline, as a result, I tend not to see these little guys very often. Spotting one to add to my list was wonderful whilst at the same time a little unimpressive. It was a cold, very wet December morning, as I headed back home along Westfields road when by chance sat in a tree at head height looking as wet as myself and as grey as the first light of morning was a Little Owl. I stopped whereupon we both took a moment to look each other up and down, neither of us too impressed as to what we were looking at on such a miserable day, I nodded in recognition and continued home leaving the owl to carry on its damp thoughts.  

I don’t always have to leave the house to observe unusual birds. I designed my front garden to have a feeding station for the birds in front of the kitchen window, many a time I’ll have been out walking for four hours only to return home without seeing any birds of great interest only to look out of the kitchen window and observe something quite remarkable. Note-worthy last winter was a pair of Lesser Redpolls that frequented the feeders. These were the first I’d seen in many years, slightly smaller than a Goldfinch yet perfectly at home flocking with them at the feeders along with Siskins and Green Finches.   

Year One List

At the end of my first year-long bird search my tally ended with 83 birds visually identified. I’m not sure if this is a great achievement or a lower-than-average at least you had a go but try harder next time achievement. Either way, it's not vastly important but what it has achieved is a baseline for next year's list.

In the table below I present a list of each bird along with, its residency in Britain and its deemed population size.   

Year Two List – So Far

I do not wish to peak too soon with this year's list, but facts are facts and I’m already at 81 birds visually identified. With five months to go, I’m rather confident that I’m going to observe many more birds than in year one. What has made the difference this year is the use of the Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell Lab on my phone. As mentioned in the equipment section I only started using this in year two and it’s helped me focus on birds I wasn’t sure about giving me an audio ID through its call at which point will go on to locate the bird and confirm with a visual ID.

Technology can be a great tool used in the correct circumstances; the Merlin Bird ID app has certainly improved my bird identification skills, yet it comes with a caution. To begin with, the app was giving me great results and I got very confident in its accuracy so when I was walking through a woodland one morning it flagged up with the ID of a Short-Toed Treecreeper, a very rare visitor to Britain at which point I got quite excited. Was this going to be an “Amsterdam moment” a mystical creature here in Whitcliffe Wood? Once again it flagged up on the app, only to be followed by a Yellow-Faced Grassquit and a Tufted Titmouse both of which I’d never even heard of before so suspected the app was playing up. Sure enough, it was not an “Amsterdam moment” just the app losing its GPS signal and locating me in counties other than where I was. Lesson learned.

I will give a full report on year two after the fact but for now, here is my list so far, not including the Short-Toed Treecreeper, Yellow-Faced Grassquit and the Tufted Titmouse!

Recourses 

Websites

British Ornithologists’ Union - https://bou.org.uk/

British Trust for Ornithology - https://www.bto.org/

Articles

How many species of birds - https://birdfact.com/articles/how-many-species-of-birds

British list of birds - https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/british-list

How many birds are there in the world - https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2021/05/how-many-birds-are-there-in-the-world

Equipment 

Hawke Frontier ED X 8x42

Lowepro Flipside Trek BP 250 AW

Merlin Bird ID app by Cornell Lab

Books