The Manchester Birder

I'm not a gull guy.  Honestly, they don't do much for me.  I know the purists will point to identification challenges, and the ubiquitous nature of the gulls of the UK, and I know there are some beautiful species of gull.  But.  They're just, you know, gulls.  The very quality of being ever present in or over almost all environments in this country possibly breeds some contempt, and I am guilty of being one of those people who sighs when others find scarce gulls in local flocks and says out loud, "I should really learn my gulls properly," and then discards that statement like a New Year Resolution on January 6th.   I've encountered a little hierarchy of birding expertise - people who can "do gulls" seem to be venerated and given extra credit, and fair play to those who have spent that much time sorting through flocks of at least fifty shades of grey: you were willing to put the time in to learn all those variable plumages and frankly, I'm not.  W...

The owl at the top of this post has nothing to do with what I've written. It's only there to encourage you to click the link, because people love owls.   When I studied theology in my youth there was a growing movement of Christian capitalism that, with its roots in American middle class gospel respectability, leached into the spiritual lives of people in the UK.  The symptoms of this movement were an increasingly branded form of religion: the right type of cover on your Bible, the latest moody quasi-religious Jesus-is-my-girlfriend album by a young solo guitarist, the proliferation of greetings cards with a Bible reference printed in front of an inspiring sunset.  There was a huge wave of tat produced, sold in a chain of high street shops called Wesley Owen, products that demonstrated devotion to the ideal.  We called it "Christian Crap".  It was a strangely expensive collection of items that accumulated on top of an ideology like foam on water - superfici...

Well that was an unexpectedly busy and brilliant month!  I didn't think I'd be travelling at all for birds in the month, and set out with a plan to stick to Lancashire and Manchester with perhaps an exotic day out in Cheshire for relief.  In reality I had days in Cumbria, north Wales, Hampshire and Norfolk along with a foray into Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire.  I love the refreshing beginning of the year, the way that a new year makes us all reappraise the birds we see, the year list chat and the surprises of winter.   Perhaps it's the nature of birding in the North West that the year doesn't necessarily fit the pattern of the UK birding big picture that makes me enjoy winter birding so much.  Here, winter is the best season for birding.  The wildfowl is here, and that's something to celebrate in the big landscapes of the Mosses and the coastal salt marsh.  Spring is good too, with the eventual return of breeding migrants and perhaps so...

Late on Friday night Kris decided that he would finally take the plunge and travel to try and see the long-staying Black-winged Kite in Norfolk.  It was a noble decision to accept his offer of a lift, but I managed to bear up under the weight of responsibility and passengered to a reasonable standard throughout a long day.  Having had an immensely enjoyable but very tiring long day the previous weekend to see the Killdeer, we decided that 5am was a decent set off time for the day, and we luxuriated in arriving on site after  sunrise for a change. We took a slight detour on our route in order to see a group of about 20 Bewick's Swans mixed in with a dozen Whoopers on grass near Ludham air field, and as someone who spends time in Lancashire with tiny numbers of Bewick's it was brilliant to see a small herd in the sunlight.  Ten more minutes and we arrived at the Hickling Broad visitor centre. Hickling Broad NNR is one of those places whose name has been made famous by ...

It was always going to happen: the first real big twitch of 2026.  Killdeer has been a bird I've wanted to see for some time and I had endured the frustration of seeing a couple appear in Western Ireland over the last few years.  This twitchable bird in Hampshire was associating with Lapwings at the rear of the tiny Ripley Reservoir and had spent five days happily doing its thing.  News on Friday broke that the farmer of the land next door to the reservoir was planning a shoot for Saturday 24th January; with Pheasant season ending on February 1st he will have been trying to maximise his return.  The palpable anxiety as a thousand twitchers searched for the legal start times of shoots (there is none) and tried to work out what time they would have to set off on Saturday morning to be there by first light but before the reasonable time of 9.30 when idiots with guns would scare the living shit out of everything in a mile radius lent something of a desperate air to this ...

Waxwing wasn't on my radar for the day of birding I had planned with Lee, but ended up being the star of a day dominated by geese.  In search of Ross's, Taiga Bean, Tundra Bean and any other species we could find, we drove north.  I've written before about the controversial place Ross's Goose has in the UK with almost no accepted records as of the time of writing despite the increase in movement associated with overpopulation of both Snow and Ross's Geese in North America.  The powers that be are probably right to be slow and cautious rather than shotgun acceptance, no matter how it seems to those of us outside the process.  Rather than retread old ground, I'll just stick a copy and paste caveat here: these geese might not be truly wild, will probably never be accepted because their wildness can't be proved, and I simply don't care.  Seeing a free-flying Ross's Goose in a mixed flock of Canadas and Greylags will never not be a thrill, regardless of s...