Year List 2018 - The Final total

Well, what a year 2018 was! I managed to get away three times this year (Iceland in March (see here), Majorca in July/August (see here) and New York in December 2018 (see here). As a result, my "year list" is my highest ever with an amazing total of... 230 species.

Of the 230 species seen this year, I had 171 species in Britain and Iceland, 29 species in Mallorca and 30 species in American.

17 species were "lifers", 2 in Iceland, 1 in Mallorca and 14 in New York.

It's very difficult to say which the highlights were, but obviously the "self found" Harlequin Ducks have to be one, as were all the amazing birds in New York. Hopefully, 2019 will be just as exciting!!

Iceland - 2 lifers

In my last post I mentioned  that I had 2 new birds whilst in Iceland last week. The first bird was Ptarmigan.  Two winter plumaged birds were seen as we drove across the island.

The second species was Harlequin Duck. 5 birds, 4 males and a female, were seen on the River Olfusa, while we were staying in Selfoss. Great birds!

Harlequin Ducks

Year List update:
95 – Pink-footed Goose
96 - Brambling
97 – Dipper
98 – Shag
99 – Eider Duck
100 – Glaucous Gull
101 -  Ptarmigan
102 – Harlequin Duck

Iceland - Day 1

Jayne and I were in Iceland for 4 days last week. It wasn't a "birding break", but we did get some nice views of the local birdlife, including 2 "lifers" and a darvic, colour ringed Redwing.

The first thing to say about Iceland's birds, is that there aren't that many... at least not in March! The first species we saw was Raven. Up to 6 birds were seen flying around together, and it was the only species of corvid seen during our trip. Having said that, they were very easy to see, and included several birds present in and around the streets of Reykjavik.

Raven

We spent our first day in Reykjavik, and it was here that we found a very noisy and confiding group of Redwing, feeding with a couple of Blackbirds and Starlings.

Redwing

In amongst the Redwing was a darvic, colour-ringed individual, 075. A quick search of the internet, found a project, The Turdus Project (see here), being run by the University of Iceland, and I was able to find out that this bird had been ringed in Reykjavik on 23rd May 2017, as a nestling. It had been reported  10 times in and around the city since then, and had not migrated. This is one of the aims of the project, to see the link between migratory strategy and breeding success, so it'll be interesting to see how the birds that stay in Iceland for the winter, do, compared to those that migrate. Here's the only photo I got of 075.

Redwing 075

A walk along the sea front produced several pairs of Eider Duck, whilst in the harbour we spotted Herring,  Lesser and Great Black-backed Gulls, and then, a couple of distant adult Glaucous Gulls. I tried luring them in with some bread (about £5.00 a loaf!!!), but they weren't interested. 

That's it for the first day. More in a second post.