Once you pop...

...you just can't stop.

1 Jan 2012 Nunnery Lakes

0630-0650: Tawny Owl, Barn Owl

0820-0900: 35spp including Little Egret, Water Rail and Snipe

Our 140

The last one

So if you can imagine the White-fronted Goose above a bit mistier and a lot further away, that's how Mark Thomas saw it from The Lodge on 20th November.  It got us up to 140 for the year from the reserve but it seemed hardly worth crowing about as the Nuns had already had these and added a few more for good measure.

Well played chaps - you deserve the win!

Snail's pace

It's all over. One of our last additions, before Christmas, was one that generated an unexpected amount of interest. Colin Campbell and I were walking back through the gardens when he asked me whether I was interested in a yellow slug. When I saw that it had a shell I was very interested in it: I had only ever seen these misfit molluscs in the book, and I always wondered what they would look like in life. Malcolm, an ecologist who has been studying snail books a lot longer than I have, described seeing it as being 'like a childhood dream come true'. Testacella haliotidea subsequently attracted a larger audience than any other gastropod has ever had on the reserve.

Determined to take us over 2000 species, I made a last visit on New Year's Eve, and spent an evening trying to name some of the trickier specimens I had collected earlier in the year. We got there just before the clock struck midnight and all my specimens turned into tiny pumpkins. Or so I thought: it turned out that while I had been at my microscope over Christmas, Dave Buckingham had been at his keyboard entering the rest of his records, giving us a total of 2025 species.

All over bar the shouting

Happy New (TEAL-less) Year! Without the incentive to dash round the reserve several times already in Jan 2012, I've passed some of the nail-biting hours waiting for the final scores to be revealed by reviewing the TEAL year. Bird species accumulation graph to follow (when I'm certain it accurately reflects the final score!) but in the meantime, here's a quick tally of 2011 blog posts by the two teams - I wonder if this hints at what's to follow?!

Grin for John!

John Marchant (Lakes uber-lister), Neil Calbrade and I (both Lakes low-listers) headed out for the penultimate lunchtime Lakes wander of the year earlier today. As Neil isn't in tomorrow, we made a special effort to find the/a Jack Snipe, to no avail. In fact - and against all the odds - the only one of us who got a Lakes tick was John, when a Peregrine flew over and had a half-hearted go at a Mallard! Heard-only Crossbill and a male Goosander were the other highlights.

Merry Christmas to all TEAL Cuppers, and everyone who has been following the action this year! Only 9 days to go...

Jack-on-the-List

Not sure how many times I've squelched round the likely-looking spots this year but it finally paid off today as a Jack Snipe shot out from under my feet! Great bird, and the list moves on to 143 (mine to 130).

Cryptically-patterned waders were the order of the day; a couple of Snipe and a Woodcock were in the same area as the Jack Snipe. The other highlights of a 60-species haul were 4 Goosander and 2 Little Egret.

Snowball

"It's all gone quiet." said Roobarb. "Too quiet." said Custard. So here's something to make a noise about after a 2 week lull in TEAL blogging:

All pics courtesy of Dave Leech

First seen in Jeff and Alison Kew's garden (easily the most nyger-rich spot in Thetford, if not the whole of East Anglia) on 23 November, caught and ringed by Dave and I at the Nunnery Lakes on 26 November.

Shame the rest of it wasn't as white as its head! See comment below as to why it should be described as leucistic (as opposed to a 'partial albino'), and for more information about plumage aberrations in birds, this detailed article in Dutch Birding.