New Year's Day Twitch - Part II

Historically, even as far back as the mid-70's, when work and travel allowed the priority on New Year's Day would be to undertake a 'twitch'. As often as not these early days adventures were undertaken with my dear friend Hugo Wood-Homer, together with whom we once held the Dorset Record of 119 for a number of years. Gone are the days as with modern technology, mobile phones, pagers, tweeter, or whatever they are called, and even in some cases the hiring of boats to scan the remote corners of for instance Poole Harbour the record must stand much higher than our paltry 119. Simple fact, records are there to be broken, so long may it continue! Back to 01/01/2017 and it wasn't even 09:00 when

GOLDFINCH

was committed to the log and soon after

BLUE TIT

and

GREENFINCH

were added. Time to return to the southern side of the 

Recording Area

in the hope of a few more 'quick additions' first of which was

ROOK

at their traditional feeding grounds at 

Bournemouth International Airport.

Driving past Parley Pond and completely unexpected

as to location, this

WIGEON

was found there and luckily so as the only sighting of the day.

To our shame

HOUSE SPARROW

had been completely overlooked, but welcomed, as were

GREAT TIT

FIELDFARE
and

MEADOW PIPIT

GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER
may well have suffered the same fate as House Sparrow had it
not been for a 'drumming' bird high in the Oaks, but with

CORMORANT
and

STARLING
there was no fear of that.
No, the fear, if you'd like to call it that, came from quite another
direction and all in the name of 'haste'!
How does it go? "More haste less speed",. well never a truer word uttered
as we decided to 'drive' along the bank of the River Stour, soon to find
our self hub-cap deep in thick, squidgy, grey clay. A call to Gavin, Hugh and
Janet's youngest son got him to scramble the tractor and head my way, while wanting to play my part
it was off to 18 Acre to 'twitch'

COMMON SNIPE

and
LAPWING
of which only c2 could be found.
That man can drive anything and soon had me back on the road,
a little crestfallen and muddier than previously, but a bottle of
Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum
might just be in order in this case!
Back up north we were met by a most obliging, even if somewhat distant,

JAY
and a couple of

COLLARED DOVE
while most obligingly c5

TEAL

had returned to the Irrigation Pond.

Between there and the Heath the rain set in 'big time' and it also

seemed like the end of daylight hours, but we forged on to record

COAL TIT

LONG-TAILED TIT

EGYPTIAN GOOSE

DARTFORD WARBLER
c5 in fact

GREEN WOODPECKER

 LINNET

 WOODCOCK
c4 in fact but still light years away from capturing our own photo.

a 'skein' of c54
CANADA GEESE

 BULLFINCH

 NUTHATCH

and the final entry of the day
TREECREEPER

bringing up a grand total of 58.
This exceeded the 2016 total by a full 'dozen' but in the deficit column
were such staples as Stonechat, Mistle Thrush, Green Sandpiper,
Kingfisher, Reed Bunting and Cetti's Warbler but
YOU NEVER GET THEM ALL!

Entry           Pageviews
China	4565  if things carry on like this we may just get the whole population!
United States	402
United Kingdom	372
Germany	68
France	23
Ireland	18
Canada	12
Estonia	8
Ukraine	8
New Zealand	6