After watching the Jack Black and Steve Martin film “The Big Year”, my daughter asked if we could do a big year!

In the USA, people used to try to see how many birds they could hunt and kill in a year - nice people! Anyway, it became a thing that instead of shooting as many birds as possible, that people would try to count as many species as possible. The record in the US is over 700 species in one year. In the UK we don’t have that many species to count, not even half. There is a long established 200 bird challenge in the UK however that bird watchers have tried to complete for years. So that was our challenge! The following are some highlights of the year…

We downloaded a checklist with all the species we may encounter in the UK across the year and on the 1st of January, the challenge commenced! We planned out various trips to include finding birds to check off the list and tried to make best use of any weekend availability. Many considerations were thought of such as which birds we could see in winter or summer or even which country we would need to visit to see certain species.

We planned Scotland (of course) to spot Eagles and things like Crested Tits which can only be found in the Cairngorms. We went to a sea watch at the Flamborough bird observatory to spot certain sea birds that you cant spot near the land and we headed to new places looking for new species. We downloaded an app that tells you when a rare bird is nearby and kept an eye on sightings across various facebook pages - If we were going to do this, we were going to give it a bloody good go! The challenge made more tricky by the fact that we were doing it as a family of 3; We all had to see each species or it didn’t count!

It didn’t take long to tick off all the common garden birds and ducks and geese etc. We visited different nature reserves with different habitats such as wetlands for wading birds and wildfowl. Moorlands, coastal, rivers, meadows, reedbeds, woodlands etc etc. The more we ticket off, the harder it became to find another species we hadn’t seen. Some highlights of the year next…

Scotland - We visited various places in Scotland which is abundant in wildlife including some species that can ONLY be found in Scotland! We went to the Isle of Mull, the Cairngorms and Dumfries and Galloway. Some highlights here included the Golden Eagle and White Tailed Eagle, Crested Tits and thousands of seabirds on the Isle of Lunga - including sitting among 13,000 Puffins!

Norfolk/Suffolk - We visited Minsmere on the Suffolk coast and the surrounding areas to spot some species that were “lifers” - first time spotted in our life. The strange looking Stone Curlew was spotted in a farmers field but on a nearby heathland we were after a Nightjar - this turned out to be the wildlife highlight of the entire year. Nightjars visit the UK in summer and as you may expect from their name, come out at night! They wake up just after sunset and begin “churring” which sounds incredible across the heathland.

MIGFEST - Along the Yorkshire Holderness coast, various locations become hotbeds of bird migration. Around Spurn Point we visited the migration festival which gave us a few ticks as birds were using the area to feed up before heading off on migration. There were ringing demonstrations too which were fascinating to watch. This was also the case at Flamborough and Bempton Cliffs with incoming winter migrants.

Flamborough Sea Watch - We joined the flamborough bird observatory on an open morning of sea watching. They leant us some scopes to look out to sea and spot migrating birds while an expert caller gave clues on where to look and what was passing. From here we saw a few more “lifers” including the Sooty Shearwater

After such an amazing effort, we found ourselves on the 14th of December, on 197 birds. With only days left we couldnt bare the thought of missing out by just a couple. After looking at the BirdGuides app we saw there were a couple of birds we needed not too far away! So this was it. We were on a mission… First stop was Rodley Nature reserve for a Jack Snipe - these are incredibly well hidden and was a tough job trying to find it. Luckily another birder had seen it previously so pointed us in the right direction! 198. Then over to St Aidans on the east side of Leeds for a Red Crested Pochard that had been hanging around. Nice and simple this one - 199.

Next up was Fairburn Ings to hopefully spot a Cattle Egret. We knew they could be spotted here hanging around near the herd of highland cattle that graze the reserve. We found the cattle and after 10 minutes or so a white Egret shaped bird flew into view…. 200! SUCCESS!

*Bird 200! Cattle Egret - Fairburn Ings*

It took some time and effort but we achieved our goal! We actually ended the year on 202 which we were incredibly proud of! We enjoyed the challenge and have decided to try again this year, although with a more “see how we get on” kind of feel this time…

200 Bird Challenge!

Bird Ringing