Day 365(ish): the back six months

The back six months of 2025 have been surprising and brilliant from a birding perspective.  It hasn't been an easy year personally or in terms of trying to make a Big Year target given how poor the east coast migration in the north has been, but there has still been an amazing array of wildlife on show.  Looking back at July to December 2025 to match the half way point review I did on July 1st I am reminded how much of a privilege and a joy this hobby is.

Looking back:

July

Following the trip for Blyth's Reed Warbler and White-winged Scoter on July 1st, I was lucky to have a week of local brilliance with Lesser Scaup at Pennington Flash, and the only Little Stint I saw all year at Rumworth Lodge.  Quail in Lancashire along with Lesser Yellowlegs, and then a long run south for Night Heron in Worcestershire kept the year list ticking over.  But the best bird of July was the Laughing Gull that spent a couple of days on the beach in the sunshine at Penzance coinciding with my camping trip and day visit to Scilly.  Very few birds I've seen in my life have left me actually laughing out loud in joy, but being able to share this close-up and beautiful gull with a series of local and long-distance birders in absolutely perfect weather left me on a real high.  All the Shearwaters and Storm Petrels from the Scillonian the following day added to my happiness.  This was some of the best birding of the year.

August

This was a month of high quality and long waits.  Zitting Cisticola and Black Stork on the same day in Suffolk would be a contender for best day of birding in any other year, but it isn't even the best day of birding I had in August this year!  Collared Pratincole at Frampton Marsh was amazing, and the Black-winged Kite in Gloucestershire might be one of the actual rarest birds of the year that I saw and it was an incredible day of birding in its own right, but it still gets pipped to the post by a completely unexpected clawing back of Black-winged Pratincole that I had missed in Northumberland and Leeds followed by the mind-blowing news of a Montagu's Harrier at Marshside in Lancashire the same afternoon.  This was the most-wanted of all most-wanted birds on my all-time wishlist, and to see it over the Lancashire saltmarsh left me beyond joyous.  I literally smiled all the way home.  What a day!

September

This month more than any other is difficult to pick any favourites out of.  There was a Greenish Warbler at Flamborough, Grey Phalarope and White-winged Black Tern in Merseyside and Lancashire, Marsh Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope and Siberian Stonechat to the north, and a superbly showy Dotterel in South Yorkshire.  But standing above all of that high quality birding was the Pechora Pipit in the north east, showing well (eventually) and calling as it flew overhead in the sunshine.  These birds are so rare in the UK away from the islands at the extremes of the country, and I still can't believe that it stayed for a couple of days to allow me to get there.  At the time, I was bemoaning the autumn and how poor migration was in the north, but looking at that collection of birds shows my lack of perspective.  I am lucky to have been able to see so much.

October

A disappointing autumn continued with the worst mid-October on Scilly in the last 20 years.  Having said that, the Mourning Dove that I saw on three separate days on St Agnes was about as good as vagrant birding gets, with close-up views supported by American Pipit, Spotted Sandpiper, Yellow-browed Warbler and Hoopoe.  The second day on Scilly got me to 300 species for the year, with Common Rosefinch, Wryneck and Big 300 Rosy Starling all great birds to see.  A year of seconds, these were my second Rosefinch, second American Pipit, second Spotted Sandpiper and second Rosy Starling ever.

November

A genuine new lease of life hit me in November after reaching my Big Year target and I spent an excellent couple of days in Northumberland and Cumbria, seeing Black-throated Diver and Little Auk as new year ticks, but enjoying views of Hen Harrier and Black Grouse and Purple Sandpiper more than these additions.  An unexpectedly productive day in the north east saw me add Dusky Warbler, Pallid Swift and the brilliant Olive-backed Pipit at South Gare - the best bird of the month - and another bogey bird put to bed in this massive year of birding.  Returning to Flamborough a couple of times during the  month I got some reasonable pictures of one of the three Dusky Warblers on site.  

December

Some brilliant views of wildfowl in Lancashire this month including Bewicks' Swans at Thurnham, Smew at Southport and a close encounter with a male Ring-necked Duck at Martin Mere would have been the highlight of a difficult month for birding, with a lack of light making time in the field difficult.  Spoiler alert: I'm writing this on December 20th and tomorrow I intend to travel for the Bufflehead currently in north Wales, along with a trip in a week down for the Pacific Diver at Mousehole in Cornwall.  This might mean a rewrite of this paragraph, as that would give me all five divers in one year in the UK, and that's one of those pleasing task-completed achievements that my pattern-driven mind just enjoys.  However, that's unlikely to improve on an amazing day in Dorset and Devon early in the month, where the UK's first Lesser Crested Tern for 20 years spent a week on the Exe estuary and a Desert Wheatear and Baikal Teal in Dorset took my year list to 309 and my British life list to 379.

Looking forward

It's been a brilliant year of birding where I've delved deep into learning about the wildlife around me and in the process learned a huge amount about myself and humanity.  The privilege of being able to see all this, take photos and write about it for hundreds of people to read has been humbling at times.  The blog has had over 12,000 reads from 37 countries which is literally 11,900 more than I was expecting when I started to write.  I've been surprised by the friendships I've made this year through this ridiculous quest for a Big Year and through being honest on the blog, and I am grateful for all the support and positivity that's come out of my birding diary.

2026 will hopefully be just as wild-focused, and my next loose quest - to reach 400 species of birds on my British life-list - will begin in January.  I hope people will continue to join me here for honest takes on life, birds, and birding, and I hope to see you out there seeing the birds and finding the joy that is the purpose of this hobby.