Mostly, the records in this blog start from the beginning of 2014, but there are several birds I wanted to add to the list in this backdated post, because they won’t feel like lifers when I eventually do see them again.

I visited friends in the Chilterns a few times in, say, 2010–2013, and saw plenty of Red Kites at the time. It might be a while before I next see one on the Sefton Coast, but it doesn’t seem right to have it as a bird I’ve ‘never seen’.

I flushed a Woodcock on my local patch of woods in around 2012. It’s only with hindsight that I now know what it was, but now I know.

In the early 1980s, I was a member of the Young Ornithologists Club, and one sighting I vividly recall is of a Treecreeper at Mere Sands Wood.

To pre-seed my life list with these species, I created a data file called seed.yml containing a simple list of birds:

- Woodcock
- Red Kite
- Treecreeper

and just had this be the starting material for the Life List in the generator plugin. Easy enough!

In a future update I might expand this with more information, such as location.

- name: Woodcock
  location: Ainsdale
- name: Red Kite
  location: Buckinghamshire
- name: Treecreeper
  location: Mere Sands Wood

Another approach might be to combine this more thoroughly with locations.yml:

- name: Ainsdale
  description: >
  	The town of Ainsdale and its immediate surroundings, including
  	sand dunes, pine woods and beach. 
  includes: [Garden, Sands Lake, Ainsdale Beach]
  historical-sightings: [Woodcock, House Sparrow, Starling]

- name: Mere Sands Wood
  description: LWT reserve
  historical-sightings: [Treecreeper]

There are immediately visible pros and cons to each approach; for now I’ll keep it simple.

Other birds seen long ago include:

  • Cuckoo (on a YOC walk along Fisherman’s Path).
  • Dipper (in the Ingleborough area; also North Wales).

And I’m adding a few that I think it would be offensive to flag as ‘lifers’:

  • House Sparrow
  • Rock Dove / Feral Pigeon
  • Woodpigeon
  • Starling
  • Mallard
  • Magpie
  • Blue Tit