Resolutions close to home?

Golden Plover (Daniel Gorton)

New Year sees keen birders reset their birding clock to zero after totting up the totals for 2024. Some will count the number of species seen in their home county, others set no geographic limit. But as the birdwatching community increasingly highlights its own responsibilities for greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel, 2025 might be the time to concentrate on a local patch: anything from the daily dog walk to a local nature reserve. Another New Year’s Resolution could be to submit regular sightings to BirdTrack, an online recording system run by the British Trust for Ornithology, RSPB and Welsh Ornithological Society among others. Users maintain their records online and make them available to local recorders and for conservation purposes. I keep a list using the BirdTrack smartphone app every time I go birdwatching.

December ended with an unseasonal Ring Ouzel at Aber Falls, a species that should be feeding on Juniper berries in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. Mid-winter sightings are not unprecedented in their northwest Wales breeding area, but in the last quarter century, half a dozen in northern Eryri in early 2015 were the only records.

A Great Grey Shrike hunted around clearfelled forestry at Rhyd Galed, east of Llyn Brenig over Christmas. Three Surf and seven Velvet Scoters were off Llanddulas, with Long-tailed Ducks here, at Benllech and Gronant. Black Redstarts were at Aberdaron, Kinmel Bay and Tonfanau, up to 30 Twite are at Flint Castle, with Water Pipits here, at Foryd Bay and Gronant. Snow Buntings remain on the Great Orme and at Kinmel Bay, with others at Penmon Point and Traeth Lligwy last week. The most remarkable news was a photo posted on social media of a Scops Owl near Beaumaris in mid-November. It is potentially the first in Wales since 1955.

The pictured Golden Plover at Gronant won second prize in the Welsh Ornithological Society’s Young Photographer competition. Daniel Gorton, a Land & Wildlife Management student at Llysfasi College near Ruthin, also took first prize for an image of Waxwings taken last winter in Flintshire. It seems there will be no repeat of Waxwing flocks in North Wales this winter: just four were reported across the whole of Britain by the Birdguides news service in December. The Euro Bird Portal shows that few have left southern Scandinavia and Finland compared to the same time last year.

This page was updated on 1 January 2025, as it originally suggested that Scops Owl would have been the first Welsh record. There have been two records in Pembrokeshire, but this would be the first in North Wales.