Wednesday, May 05, 2010

BIGBY-style Big Day 2010

Brian The Natural Stone Stone and I did a Big Day on May 3, 2010 entirely self-propelled (by bicycle and foot), around Peterborough, Cambs. Despite awful northerlies and freezing conditions, we scored a slightly outrageous 110 species of bird, which we are rather pleased with for an inland area (it was entirely within Cambridgeshire).
To put this in context, last year I got 105 by myself and the old record set in the 1980s was 107, and this year's GPOG bird-race winning team (motorised) got 111 species.
Highlights included such local rarities as: Mandarin, Cetti's Warbler, Whinchat, Crane, Spotted Crake, Corn Crake and Red-rumped Swallow.
But the best bird of all was a mammal: Otter, two of them in fact at a range of less than 10m; my first Otters in England!

1 comment:

Fraser Simpson said...

Sounds like a fantastic day Mike!