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Shore Lark, Bufflehead, Surf Scoter, Lesser Yellowlegs, American Wigeon... January 2026 birding gets good

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Saturday 10th January was nothing less than a bloody brilliant day out.  Setting off at 6am and heading west along the north Wales coast Kris and I arrived at Foryd Bay just after 8am to clear skies and a sunrise above snow-covered mountains.  Unlike last time I was in a vehicle at Foryd we managed to park in a place that wasn't a sinkhole of mud, and walking south we crossed a footbridge from which the Bufflehead had been seen the late afternoon previous.  A Kingfisher flitted back and forth along the channel which remained ice-free, a Greenshank was active on the far bank of the marsh, and wildfowl was present in good numbers, but no sign of the dapper duck we had travelled to see.  Wandering north we eventually bumped into familiar birders from close to home, three gents who are always encouraging and quick to share sightings and knowledge.  These guys are always a welcome sight at any birding location, and we tend to see good birds when we bump into them....
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Corn Buntings, Great Northern Diver and the second naïveté

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"You're spoiled on your patch," was not the phrase I'm used to hearing about birding in Greater Manchester.  It's easy to fall into the contempt that over-familiarity breeds, and to disregard the variety and quality of wildlife that squeezes into the last remaining green(ish) spaces left available in a county where the drive to build every town to 120% of its current population is primarily destroying green belt.  I suppose I'm used to the same 140-150 species of birds that pass through or live in the 10km circle that I inflict my birding upon.  I have this realisation periodically, usually when I meet someone new to the area or who has recently begun birding.  Last month it was Dinoj, a Sri Lankan nurse and birder who moved to my home town six months previously and is seeing all of the local wildlife for the first time.  He's literally finding it out as he goes.  His quiet, measured excitement at realising he's seeing Siskins for the first time, his j...
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Tundra Bean Geese, Slavonian Grebes and a Lesser Scaup in an unusual direction (for me)

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I call myself the Manchester birder but it's a bit of a misnomer.  I do most of my birding in Manchester, that's true enough, but, due to the insane and unreasonable amount of traffic in this little city, I rarely venture out to the east or immediate south of the county.  That's the part of the map marked, "here there be dragons."  I focus on a flattened-on-the-east circle centred around west Manchester and if I venture out of it, you better believe I'm venturing to Lancashire, Yorkshire or parts far to the south.  The counties to the immediate south of Manchester within an hour long drive have become "lands I must traverse" in order to get to places where I may see birds.  In fact, I've spent so little time in north east Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and so on that it's all a bit of a mystery to me in terms of birds.  I have taught geography for quite some time, so I'm aware of place names and so on, but the reality of ...
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New Year's Birding 2026

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January 1st 2026 at 6.52am and we pulled up at Leighton Moss.  Six hours earlier I'd been wishing my daughter a Happy New Year and trying to persuade her to go to sleep.  I was tired, but part of that was caused by the excitement of a new year of birding.  While 2025 was started alone, and New Years' Day cut short by a panic attack, 2026 started with friends and after the first two kilometres, a fervent desire for the gloves I'd left in the car.  We were making our way to Lower Hide on a quest to see as many species of birds as we could in one day.  Not for me this time, but for Lee; my year list is going to be a lackadaisical slapdash of hit and miss birding after last years' efforts - sorry if my Bubo total made you think I was going to be pushing hard again. Tawny Owls called back and forth around us as we walked, and the sounds of a wetland waking up were increasingly loud.  Water Rails, Coot, Greylags and the deep coughs of red deer carrying under a mi...
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Manchester Birder's December 2025 Summary

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   What a year.  My first bird of 2025 was a Dunnock on my garden on January 1st as I fought off a panic attack.  My last species added was a Bufflehead in a beautiful area of Wales in the presence of many new friends, and my last species seen was a Scaup on Pennington Flash.  Though in some ways I have limped over the line of the end of the year in terms of my Big Year attempt (only adding 4 species in the month when I could have travelled for at least 6 more) I have been much more content with birding in Lancashire and Manchester this month.  The stunning highlight birds are all the more appreciated when those days are picked out of a series of visits to places that are, if not local, then at least localish.  Incredible trips to Devon, Dorset and north Wales were the exceptions to my self-imposed rule of local birding.  I wrote at the start of the year when I began this blog of days across Lancashire and how they made me feel and it was this cir...
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