A Big Year? Hoopoe, Roseate Tern, White Stork, Honey Buzzard – May 12th-21st 2025

 

It’s fair to say that I’m having a good year, birds wise.  Though a Big Year list wasn’t my aim, the year list is moving along well, and having moved past 250 species for the year with 7 months to go, it seems right to celebrate the richness of the species I’ve seen in the last ten days or so.

 

Hoopoe, Newchurch Common, May 12^th

The influx of Hoopoes this spring has had me hopeful of a local(ish) one, and I refused to travel for birds as reasonably close as Birmingham, Derbyshire and Doncaster because I was/am hoping for a Manchester bird.  When this singing male appeared at Newchurch Common I was in East Anglia seeing incredible British breeding birds and not really hopeful of catching up with the Cheshire bird, but it did the right thing and stuck around – Cheshire is close enough to call local!  A good crowd of people seeing their first/first for the North West/first for Cheshire managed to connect with this butterfly of a bird.  It was strange to see it feeding in the ruts at the edge of a field alongside Pied Wagtails and Blackbirds, but stranger again to see the Hoopoe singing and watch that huge throat inflation that produces the eponymous “hoop” sound.  It wasn’t the classic shape of a Hoopoe that I’ve seen dozens of times in France and Spain, the beautiful, crested elegance and those big sprawling wings lost in the comedy of a tiny little head perched atop a bloated throat, along with a comically long bill, all in the context of an oak in Cheshire.  Lovely stuff.

 

Roseate Tern and White Stork May 20^th

Then there was the Nightjar and hearing Quail that I’ve written about elsewhere, followed on May 20^th by poor views of two excellent species: Roseate Tern through the fence at Seaforth and White Stork on Burton Marsh.  The fence at Seaforth is an old friend (I bloody hate that fence), with my first Roseate Tern seen through the ugly metal slats in 2021 and American Golden Plover in September 2022, though I have memories of missing Wryneck because I couldn’t get the angle to see low enough from the slope.  Having seen the Roseate Tern and developed both eye and back strain trying to do so, I left with hopes for better views later in the summer.  Later the same day I had an evening out to see the White Stork (of unknown origin) on Burton Marsh. Knowing how big this area is, I wasn’t expecting it to be close in, but on arrival all that was visible was the very tip of the crown of the stork.  These tall birds are experts in hiding in these environments: the Crane at Little Woolden Moss vanished into what looked like a flat field but was in fact a narrow ditch, and the White Stork similarly found grass tall enough and a dip low enough to conceal it altogether for 20 minutes at a time.  Very mobile, this stork kept walking out of the creeks to stand thigh deep in grass for a couple of minutes in locations hundreds of metres distant from where it had been previously.  While the origin of all White Storks in the UK is potentially suspect, this free-flying bird feeding out in the wild amongst a host of herons and egrets felt wild to me, and though the list police might have a little moan I’ll be counting this until someone tells me Blackpool Zoo want their ornamental bird back…

 

Honey Buzzard May 21^st

Every summer I spend a day or so just sitting at Wykeham Raptor Viewpoint and soaking in the Crossbills, Tree Pipits, Goshawks and all the other excellent wildlife on show in North Yorkshire.  The bird that has been missing the last two years has been Honey Buzzard, and so, with reports of displaying individuals on May 20^th, Lee and I decided to head over early on May 21^st to see what we could see.  Despite getting lost (the tree-felling around the viewpoint really changed how it looks on approach!) after parking up and regretting the choice of shorts (6 degrees C!  6!) the first birds that we saw were a fly over of Common and Honey Buzzards.  They kept us waiting another hour or so, but once they began to fly over the viewpoint they were absolutely magnificent!  Swooping, soaring and diving, these were the best views I could have asked for of such a thrilling bird.  A distant Goshawk, hunting Sparrowhawk and Kestrel, a flyby Barn Owl and the constant song of Tree Pipit and Garden Warbler along with an elusive but vocal Willow Tit completed a brilliant couple of hours.  A short drive to Bempton Cliffs for Lee to see some seabirds for his year list allowed me some opportunities to see Puffins a bit closer in than my first view of them this year, and it was a fun challenge to try and capture photos of them as they flew from their cliff nests.

 

Though I find thinking of the birds I see as ticks on a list to be a little distasteful, there is no doubt that I enjoy seeing the widest variety of birds every year.  My “not really a big year list” year list seems to be becoming a Big Year List after all.  Perhaps my friends will tell you that it was obvious that I was aiming to hit a big total and that my personality type has always been one for seeing as much as possible – trying as many real ales as I can and keeping notes; sampling as many single malts from as many distilleries as possible; travelling to as many of the 92+ league grounds as I could in previous incarnations of my life… So maybe it was inevitable that this unusual year of daytime freedom would extend out into a push to see 300+ species of birds in a calendar year.  I’d like to achieve that, but, honestly, if it doesn’t happen I won’t be upset. 

I’m having too much fun seeing the birds to worry about the list.