NMT 2021 - the last few weeks - and a few reflections on the year

For one reason and another I wasn't able to get out birding as much as I would have liked in most of December. When I did it felt like very hard work seeing any birds at all other than really common species, so I was pleased to add two more species to the list before Big Ben's bongs at midnight on the 31st.

A trip to Cowpen Bewley Woodland Park on the 19th yielded the first of these.  I spent quite a while sitting watching the feeders that have been set up there (now in a different place than they were earlier in the year) and was rewarded with a couple of brief views of a Marsh Tit (NMT #173) as well as good numbers of Great, Blue and Coal Tits, a few Chaffinches, a lovely male Bullfinch, several Robins and Blackbirds, a couple of Jays, a Great Spotted Woodpecker calling (but not showing itself) and a tiny little Goldcrest (Britain's smallest bird).

On the 27th, after a lazy Christmas Day and Boxing Day, I took advantage of the calm conditions and did my last bike ride of the year, to South Gare. I timed my arrival very well, as one of the regular South Gare birders just happened to be at the very spot where a Woodcock (a shy, mostly nocturnal species) was roosting under a bush near the road. I would never have found it without his help as they are amazingly well-camouflaged. It wasn't new for the year (I saw one on the 1st of January) but it was my best ever view of one and,  I think, the first time I've ever seen one on the ground in 40-odd years of birding. Thanks Bob.

Eurasian Woodcock  at South Gare, 27th Dec 2021

Woodcocks breed in woodland over much of Britain with their populations being boosted in the winter months by many birds coming in from northern Europe where, presumably, the forest soils are frozen solid or covered in snow at this time of year, preventing them from reaching their prey of earthworms and other burrowing invertebrates.

Most of the rest of my time at the Gare was spent watching a female Velvet Scoter, and several other commoner waterbirds, from various different viewing points and eventually getting some not totally awful pictures of the scoter (my 174th species for the list and the last new bird of the year). The whitish blotch on the cheeks of this dark sea-duck distinguish it from females of the more regular Common Scoter, as well as the white wing patch which is present in both male and female Velvets and absent in Common. Although the white in the wing is only just barely visible (with the eye of imagination) in the photos below, I did get a good view of it when the bird was disturbed by a man in a kayak and flew to a different location.

A female Velvet Scoter at South Gare, 27th December 2021

The calm conditions allowed me to get this nice shot of a pair of Red-breasted
Mergansers (male on the left, female on the right), which flew in and landed
quite close to me while I was watching the Velvet Scoter

On the last morning of the year I spent some time on my local patch, Middle Marsh Nature Reserve in Middlesbrough, and although I didn't get any new birds for the year, I did see a Kingfisher a couple of times - my first here since February. 

Doing the NMT list this year has meant that I've done both more birding and more cycling in the year than I've done for a long time (possibly ever). It has, however, involved quite a lot of 'twitching' (see here for a discussion of the proper meaning of this term - Twitching, bird-watching and birding), even within the local area, as my decisions about where to go were often influenced by what birds other people had been seeing at different sites, and I am coming to the conclusion that a commoner bird that you find for yourself is often more satisfying than a rare one which someone else has found. 

It has shown me how easy it is to get to some good birding sites by bike, particularly Hartlepool, which I had previously thought was just too far but is actually quite easy (so long as the wind is not too strong) because of the lack of hills. I will definitely be spending more time there in the future, as well as at my two most visited sites of the year, Saltholme and South Gare.

In 2022 I intend to carry on doing most of my birding by bike or on foot but I have decided to focus much more on my two local patches: the big one which includes Middlesbrough Dock and the south bank of the Tees going as far as Smith's Dock in Redcar & Cleveland Borough and the small one - Middle Marsh Nature Reserve on Ormesby Beck. 

I haven't talked very much about Middle Marsh in this blog up to now but I'm planning to correct that this year with, hopefully weekly, updates about the birds, plants, insects and small mammals of this little urban post-industrial site near the middle of Middlesbrough.