1st January means a new year list to start. I've been doing this every year since 2010, keeping a list of how many different species I see. Being a bit of a data nerd I also have many different pivot tables and charts associated with this. The main 2 are the cumulative build through the year ending with the year total (2020 and 2021 are pretty poor for obvious reasons!).
With January here I've had a chance to do a couple of trips out so far. The first few days were just local stuff (you only tick woodpigeon once!) till I had my first proper trip. This was heading north, up to Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire. The first stop was one I won't go into detail for on the location, suffice to say it was my first ruddy duck for some years.
It was really early, barely light when I got there and I could only just see the bird in the gloom. For those of you who are not aware, ruddy ducks used to be relatively common in the UK through the 80's but then they were deemed persona non grata. This was due to the potential for them to interbreed with white-head ducks in Spain. The government put a bounty on their heads and there were some pretty disgraceful scenes of men (yes, it was always men!) in boats chasing flocks of ducks across lakes and shooting them. The numbers have crashed and now only a few remain at large. Generally their locations are suppressed as the bounty is still on them. The location of this one - a female - was put out on social media and the bird reporting services though so was no longer a secret. Unfortunately along with myself this morning were two blokes in unmarked cars also eyeing up the ruddy duck. They had bins but unlike birders did not engage with me. I questioned them about their motives - "are you here to shoot it?". They conformed they were. I, how shall we say, expressed my displeasure at that but there is nothing you can do. They have legal right to do it as long as they do it safely! I put the info out and left. I didn't wait to stay and watch it being shot. Others on site later confirmed one of them was lurking in the reed bed waiting for it to show itself. I have no information on its fate but I doubt it survived.
Anyway, after that I decided to head off across the country to see birds which I hoped weren't being killed later that day! My first stop was Eyebrook reservoir in Leicestershire. There was a good selection of ducks on offer here, including smew, ring-necked duck, pintail and others.
This was a day and a site more for ticks than for photos. Most of the birds were very distant. In the photo above are about 6 smew, the ring-necked duck and most surprisingly a family party of Bewicks swans. These classic winter swans are becoming very rare in this country now so it was nice to see them here.
Like the other winter swan, the whooper, they have yellow rather than orange bills. The yellow is much less extensive on the bill, barely going half to a third of the way along. They are also smaller and have a much more delicate appearance with a short neck.
After this I headed over to Rutland Water where I got a very distant great northern diver and then onto Eldernell for an even-further-off group of, apparently, 16 common cranes. Way too distant to count them.
A mixed day with some good birds seen albeit not a good day for images of them! Also rather sad thinking this may very possibly be the last ever ruddy duck I see in this country.
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