WOW what a year
In our 25th Anniversary year we were once again reminded why we love doing what we do. 2016 will go down as one of the all-time classics for rare and scarce birds. It had it all, and we were delighted to play our part in bringing such exciting news to you all.
The Birds
Beginning with a Glaucous-winged Gull in County Cork on January 2nd and [almost] ending with a Dusky Thrush in Derbyshire, what came in between will be talked about for years to come. The standout event was undoubtedly Britain’s first Siberian Accentor on Mainland Shetland and the following influx of these and other Asian birds along the east coast. In any other year that event alone would make it a memorable one but it was merely the tip of the rarity laden iceberg that was 2016.
Picking a highlight after that is probably an impossible task and everyone will have their own favourites, but Britain’s first Eastern Kingbird, a spring Black-billed Cuckoo and a twitchable Black-faced Bunting will all live long in the memory. And Just imagine the euphoria for birders at Bempton RSPB watching Britain’s fourth Eastern Crowned Warbler when a Black-browed Albatross cruised by close-in shore!
Britain’s first Western Purple Swamphen in Suffolk (and later in Lincolnshire), a Dalmatian Pelican and an impossibly elusive Lammergeier in Southwest England all caused plenty of provenance and list-related discussion. Cliff Swallows in the Isles of Scilly and at Minsmere RSPB (Suffolk), a Royal Tern in Ireland a smart Great Knot at Titchwell RSPB (Norfolk) were well-received, but an Eyebrowed Thrush in Northumberland, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo on the Western Isles and a Red-footed Booby in East Sussex all teased would-be twitchers.
Britain’s second Green Warbler was found about as far away from the site of the first (1983 on Scilly) as you can possibly get. Discovered on Unst in mid-May it was never going to draw a ‘mainland sized’ crowd but most of those who put the effort in were rewarded with another new bird.
Speaking of rewards, anyone who ended up putting a tick next to the word Lammergeier will certainly have deserved to do so. The immature that spent a couple of weeks in the south west proved almost impossible to pin down for all but a small number of people, many of whom spent days in the field.
When the full story of 2016 is documented (don’t worry we are already on the case!) ‘Shetland’ will be a word repeated many many times. In addition to the Siberian Accentors, Green Warbler and Black-faced Bunting mentioned above, Siberian Rubythroat, Whites, Siberian and Swainson's Thrushes, multiple Pine Buntings, Brown Shrikes, Calandra Lark and Black-browed Albatross all graced Shetland in 2016!
A truly unbelievable year for rare birds.
Record-breakers
2016 was indeed a record breaking year and for the first time in our 25-year history we sent well over 100 Mega-Alerts. But it wasn’t just about uber-rare birds. On October 9th the birdnews team had their first ever, 1,000 message day, 1,002 to be precise! On average that involves sourcing, typing, checking and sending a birdnews message every 59.2 seconds for 16.5 hours! Prior to this our largest ever day was 753, set the previous day, so to send nearly 50% as much again in a single day was a staggering total and an unbelievable effort by the birdnews operator.
Another record broken this year saw Steve Gantlett become the first British birder to hit the 600 mark for birds seen in Britain (following the UK400Club taxonomy). It is a fantastic achievement by Steve and we would like to congratulate him and also pass on our thanks for his regular photo contributions in our weekly roundups.
2016 also saw the British year-listing record broken. Going about his task without any fanfare or fuss Derbyshire birder Mark Pass broke the 400 total (UK400Club taxonomy) in November when he connected with the Killdeer on Shetland. Mark has been one of our very long-standing customers and we have been delighted to be able to help him throughout the year with help and advice in his year-listing exploits. To break such a record must require tremendous dedication and stamina, as well as a fair amount of good luck. Many congratulations to Mark and the very best of luck to anyone who attempts to beat this record in future, you will certainly need it!
Further afield, Dutch Birder Arjan Dwarshuis broke the world year-listing record (set the previous year) clocking up his 6,119th species on November 10th. He has set his sights on 7,000+ species, will he make it? We will let you know in the New Year.
Not just birdnews
Away from the birdnews desk 2016 was another very busy year at RBA. In March we were delighted to be the main sponsors at the Birders Against Wildlife Crime Conference, held over two days in Bristol in March. BAWC are doing very important work bringing the issues of wildlife crime to a wider audience and they need the help and support of those who care passionately about all wildlife, not just birds. We are proud to support BAWC and look forward to what, will no doubt be another very interesting conference in 2017.
Britain’s bird observatories are some of the most important hotspots for rare and scarce birds but they also play a role introducing new people to birding and other areas of natural history.
Spurn Bird Observatory had a superb year for rarities and has continued to innovative and bring birding to new people. They opened their new observatory in 2016 where we installed a computer for visitors to use during their stay at the obs. As well as this we supported the publication of the terrific Birds of Spurn book by Andy Roadhouse. Bird books on this scale are very expensive to produce and distribute so we are very glad to have helped in getting this book into production. In September we were delighted to attend the 2016 Spurn Migration Festival. During the weekend we ran a totally new and bespoke service called SpurnAlert, where visitors to the Mig Fest could get a free pager on which we transmitted all the latest news from the Mig Fest and surrounding area. We look forward to returning to MigFest in 2017 and offering our SpurnAlert service to visiting birders.
On the other side of the country we supported Bardsey Bird and Field Observatory by sponsoring their new staff and volunteer clothing.
Your contributions
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have supported us once again in 2016.
Thank you also if you contributed to our weekly birding roundups by way of photos, videos, drawings and paintings. We really are very grateful to have such an amazing pool of content to choose from to bring the roundups to life each week.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to report your sightings. We know that it is birders in the field who do all the hard work finding and reporting birds and we do our very best to gather news, make sense of it all and get it to birders in the field as quickly and as accurately as we possibly can.
This has been our mission for 25 years and will continue to be, hopefully for another 25 years and beyond.
So from all the team here at RBA we wish you all a very merry Christmas and safe, healthy and bird-filled 2017.
The Rare Bird Alert team
Dick, Chris, Stuart, Will, Pete and Brian
Christmas and New Year Opening
Birdnews: As always it will be ‘service as normal’ over Christmas and New year as the team bring you birdnews 16.5 hours per day seven days a week.
Admin and support:
Closed Friday 23rd December (1pm) until Wed 28th
Open Wednesday 28th until Friday 30th (9.30am-4pm)
Closed Saturday 31st until Tue 2nd
If you need any technical or admin support over the festive period please email us and the birdnews team will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible.
There will be a weekly roundup out on Wednesday 21st December and then Andy gets a couple of weeks rest before resuming with a double-header on Wednesday 4th January.
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