That Was The Year That Was/2010: a Flintshire Odyssey

Not a bad year all-in-all with 205 species recorded in the UK during 2009 – the vast majority of which were found within an hour’s drive of Casa Del Shenton. Just to put things into perspective though, I managed to log slightly more species during a fairly short trip to India – we have to work hard for our birds in Blighty!

Birding highlights include a pair of Common Cranes at Fenn’s Moss; a flock of gorgeous Waxwings at Wepre Park; two showy Shorelarks at Point of Ayr, a juvenile female Goshawk at Pennington Flash; a Dipper on my local River Gowy, and finally, finding a pair of breeding Dunlin at Cadair Berwyn.

India continued to amaze and even taking into consideration a good clutch of new birds during this year’s sojourn, watching my favourite bird - The Black-necked Stork - takes some beating as does its closest rival for the top spot: Pallas’ Fish Eagle.

However, despite 2009 containing many excellent birding moments, the year will always be most notable for the fabulous thirty minutes I spent watching my first Otter fishing in the River Severn at the marvellous Dolydd Hafren reserve in Montgomeryshire.

Plenty of positive news on bird populations too, and although only based on personal observations and hearsay, Hen Harriers, Whinchat, Redstart and oddly Bullfinch seemed to be more numerous on the Welsh Uplands this year, but on the downside Spotted Flycatchers were very difficult to find indeed.

The Cuckoo was the subject of special attention by the British Trust for Ornithology this year as it sadly continues its spectacular decline. I do not have too many previous years of experience to draw upon, but I found them to be relatively abundant in North Wales this spring, although I will concede that I walked through several areas of classic Cuckoo habitat that were unoccupied.

This year has also seen me shift the focus of the vast majority of my birding to Flintshire, so next year I have decided to intensify my watching of this area and see how many species I can find during the calendar year.

Flintshire seems to be a somewhat neglected and under-watched evidenced by the paucity of sightings on various local websites and by the rather sketchy submission of records to the North-East Wales Bird Report for 2008 – I also seldom see many other birders!

Until 2010.