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Thursday, 6 February 2025

Rationalising my life list: and the ones that got away...

Like many birders, I keep several bird lists: UK life list, Norfolk list, birds I've photographed and year lists. I've seen over 300 birds in a calendar year on three occasions (all of which included a Scillonian Pelagic) photographed 342 species and recorded 358 in Norfolk.

Every now and then the BBRC carries out a few lumps or splits, both of which affect the totals: this year it's said we're going to 'lose' some Redpolls, Green-winged Teal, Hooded Crow and other species that currently occur on my list!

With this in mind I dug out my old 'pre-electronic' bird logs and had a count up: it seems my 'revised list' is now 434 species. I sort of stopped twitching at 400, so the extras have been birds such as Lammergeier that I made a special effort to see. While looking through the log for 1987, I came across the only truly mega species I found all by myself. The key phrase is 'by myself': despite phoning every birder I knew from the paybox at Horsey, no-one managed to arrive before dark...

The painting is of what was possibly the best day I ever enjoyed in Norfolk. Will we ever see another like it?





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