Birding highlights of 2017

2017 had some pretty special moments. Nearly all of my birding time was spent working the patch for which there were some decent rewards but nothing really rare.

My highlight of 2017 sitting firmly at the #1 spot was one of only a few off-patch twitches - the Yellow Warbler at Portland on 21-08-2017. I don't generally get a buzz from twitching off-patch; I appreciate seeing a rare bird but it rarely gives me any real excitement. However after a few initial brief sightings and about an hour of patiently waiting, this small warbler originally from America posed beautifully for a few seconds. Everything about this moment was a huge buzz. I was there with some other Axe patch birders, we'd seen the bird soon after arrival, it eventually posed well with a nice setting and then I came away with this in pretty challenging conditions for photography:

#2 for me has to be the Red Kite passage over the patch on 24th and 25th of May. I was out looking at dragonflies when the first few drifted over; at that point I had no idea just how many I'd be seeing in the coming few days. I saw somewhere between 50 and 60 but there would have been a fair few more than that going over in total. A lot of the birds were passing over low as well, sometimes only 100-200 foot above me. It was a fantastic spectacle. Some readers of this blog probably see Red Kites on an almost daily basis, but I typically see <5 in the average year here, so this really was exceptional.

#3 slot is filled by an Osprey, one of four that I saw on patch in 2017. On September 8th I got an early birthday present when an Osprey showed brilliantly only a couple hundred feet upstream from Tower Hide. Over 10 hours of waiting (had a Kittiwake and 2 Knot as bonuses) but every second was worthwhile. Rare? No. But bloody impressive.

#4 Spoonbill and Cattle Egret posing together. I found 2 Spoonbills on Black Hole Marsh on April 11th and managed to get a shot of one of them taking off alongside a Cattle Egret the following morning. Two locally scarce (although Cattle Egret numbers had a bit of a boom in England in 2017) species posing together was great to see! We ended up having double figure numbers of Cattle Egrets in total for 2017.

#5 A Grey Phalarope which stayed for a few days from September 20th makes the highlights as it was the first one I've managed to see on patch. It showed rather well at times...

A few other highlights worth mentioning include the Waxwings at Newton Abbott, the Stilt Sand (and Least Sand) at Lodmoor and the Hawfinches at Shute. Hawfinches would have been in the top 5 had I not managed to miss almost 10 patch birds!

Having just looked back at my 2016 review I see that the 2017 one is a lot shorter and with fewer rarities! Hopefully that will change for the next one...


I wish all my readers a happy & successful 2018. Hopefully it'll be a great birding year!