Happy New Year. A time of resolutions and restarts, and also a time when birdwatching is one of the best activities you can do (but when isn’t?). If you are a year lister (it is not compulsory), it is a time to bag a few great birds nice and early. How about these five crackers for the last days of Christmas, and beyond?
Short-eared Owl
Short-eared Owls are fairly scarce breeding birds of upland areas, moors and young plantations etc in the UK. Most of us encounter them as wintering birds when British breeders move down to lower rough grasslands, saltmarshes and so on, and numbers are boosted from continental birds crossing the North Sea. Long-winged and buoyant in flight, these lovely owls have the added bonus (for we observers) of often hunting while the sun is still up, when they patrol like the owl equivalent of harriers, seeking voles. They are similar in flight to Long-eared Owls (which are habitually more nocturnal), but have paler bellies and if seen well, obviously yellow eyes.
Purple Sandpiper
Even though about 13,000 Purple Sandpipers winter around our coasts, this charming, dumpy wader (like a big Dunlin in Redshank’s clothing), is a hugely desirable find, especially on a New Year Big Day – a real birder’s bird, you could say. Often in association with Turnstone, Purple Sandpipers favour rocky coasts, where they riskily feed among seaweed where the waves crash. And for those out for the 1 January Big Day, they are famously loyal to sites year on year, so find out where they were last winter and target that area.
Water Pipit
The scarce (c200 winterers)Water Pipit used to be ‘lumped’ with the closely related Rock Pipit, but tends to have very different habitat requirements than its darker, splodgy, coast loving cousin. Water Pipits are anomalous in that they breed at altitude in mountainous areas, but winter around wet fields and similar habits often at sea level. That is when we see them, of course, at this time of year looking like pale Rock Pipits with finely streaked breasts on a white background, and usually a well defined pale supercilium (‘eyebrow’) and a couple of white transverse wing-bars. These are painfully wary birds, often flying up with a ‘feest’ call and heading off hundreds of metres into the distance before disappearing into wet vegetation.
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Our only woodpecker with any red on its underparts, the Starling-sized Great Spot is easily identified in a UK context (so far, similar species such as Syrian Woodpecker have not made it across the Channel). Males have a red spot on the nape, females are plain black in that area. Otherwise, note the white shoulder patches and crimson undertail coverts and ‘vent’. But, by the time you see these features you will probably have heard the distinctive ‘kick’ call, so know there is a GSW up there somewhere…
Shore Lark
Mainly an east coast speciality, the Shore lark is another bird which many birdwatchers and year listers want to see as early in the year as possible. They are genuinely rather scarce birds, with an average of only about 75 visiting each winter (though numbers vary greatly). Like other larks, they are quite large for passerines, but unlike other larks, they have beautiful yellow and black markings on the face (and even tiny black ‘horns’ visible at times. As is hinted at strongly in the name, these are birds which enjoy a beach, be it sandy or shingly, shuffling along rather unobtrusively, looking for small morsels to pick up (seeds or invertebrates). Like Snow Buntings and Lapland Buntings which often share the same habitat, they can be quite approachable (though not always!).