Further into bird listing

I mentioned the "listing" aspect of birding in my last post. It seems to be mainly Americans and British people that are into this competitive sub-culture of bird watching.

There are approx. 10,000 birds in the world. New species get discovered every now and again (23 were discovered in the first 9 months of 2013) and of course sadly some disappear and become extinct. No one has ever achieved seeing every known living bird yet, but some people are getting close and there are now many people hunting that record, in the hope of becoming the first.

Most people don't have the time, money or inclination to pursue birding to this extreme though, so the more popular lists are things like "life list" (for all birds seen in your life), "garden list" (for all birds seen in or over your garden) and most competitive of all.. the year list per country/geographic region.

I live in North West England so the list I choose to compete in is the year list for the United Kingdom.

This involves me making a list of the birds I have seen, only in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the small islands around the UK which count as part of the United Kingdom), during 2014.

There are, of course, a few rules. The birds must be alive, wild and unrestrained. So things like birds in the zoo or falconry place would not count. The same goes for nan's pet budgie, domestic livestock like chickens or peacocks.

The UK is not one of the most bird-rich areas in the world (that would be somewhere in South America or Indonesia probably) but it's definitely not bad.

According to Wikipedia, there are 596 species of wild birds that have occurred in  Britain as of 5 December 2013. Of these, some will only visit for a few months each year. I am not sure how many are resident in the UK the whole year through, but probably less than half of those 596.

Last year the UK Champion lister was Lee GR Evans with 351. This year he is top of the pops again with rank 1 in Britain at the time of writing (27th July) and 292 birds seen. My figures are rank 287 with 69 species seen.

The last 2 months have seen me read many bird books, begin watching David Attenborough's Life Of Birds series, spend every weekend visiting several nature reserves and of course not forgetting my garden which gave me a greenfinch the other day so it is playing it's part too. I am hoping I can get to 150 for my 2014 year list (about half of Lee and the other Premiership Birders), let's see how I do.