Bill Neil

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Birding In Lanzarote January 2020

A frequent holiday we make in January is to Lanzarote and whilst it is not a birding holiday as such, we do try to see a few birds and always take a run out to El Jable, the “desert area” in the top half of the island. Over the two weeks we got a relatively modest thirty-four species of birds but a few of the ones we do get are very special.

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Birding Group Pennington Flash 7th January 2020

The first birding group outing of 2020 was to Pennington Flash. I wasn’t able to walk around the whole of the route due to my muscle injury but we still managed to get a decent number of birds but nothing particularly special. A nice day to get out and about though and Pennington was very busy with birders who also thought the same.

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December 2019 : Summary

UK Species Year List to December 2019 : 184
Total UK Species in December 2019 : 71
New “Year Ticks” in December 2019 : 4
New “Life Ticks” in December 2019 : 0

Wirral High Tide 28th December 2019

Our last chance of the year to do some birding came on the 28th December when there was a moderately high tide on the Wirral – 9.24m at 12:19pm. We hoped that this would give us a little boost to our December monthly species list.

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Birding Musselburgh and Joppa 23rd December 2019

An unexpected funeral in Musselburgh just before Christmas saw us holed up at the Rockville Hotel in Joppa. This had the unexpected value of having rooms directly looking over the Firth of Forth. In fact they had tall windows that were hinged to open all the way inwards so you could sit in your room with a scope with no glass in-between. This gave us some great birding opportunities that helped take our minds of the upcoming funeral.

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Birding Group Schedule for 2020

Jan 7:   Pennington

Jan 14: Burton

Jan 21: Moore

Jan 28: Sandbach

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Birding Group Burton Mere Wetlands 10th December 2019

The last birding group outing before Christmas was to Burton Mere Wetlands. Because of my leg injury I couldn’t get far around the reserve but I had a pleasant enough couple of hours around the reception hide getting the usual birds and a surprise Merlin.

After that we repaired to the Wheatsheaf at Neston for our lunch and planning session for the next term.

November 2019 : Summary

UK Species Year List to November : 181
Total UK Species in November : 42
New “Year Ticks” in November : 0
New “Life Ticks” in November : 0

November was a bit of a washout birding-wise. I managed to do a birding group day out to RSPB Leighton Moss on the 5th but shortly after I had a mishap that left me unable to walk for the rest of the month. So, what I hoped would be a chance to do some final additions to my year list turned out to be a disaster. Still, it makes writing up this months summary easy. Nothing to report

Birding Group Visit to RSPB Leighton Moss – 5th November 2019

The first birding group outing of November was to RSPB Leighton Moss. As, ever, at this time of year, we were hoping for sightings of Bearded Tits and some of our group got good views of them from the grit trays. Unfortunately it did not cross anyones mind to call the others of the group who were a few metres away in the Public Hide !

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October 2019 : Summary

October 2019 : Summary

UK Species Year List to October : 181
Total UK Species in October : 64 (UK Only)
New “Year Ticks” in October : 0
New “Life Ticks” in October : 0
Life ticks in October 2019 0

None

Year ticks in October 2019
None

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