Birders Twitter - S2E20

Both co-hosts and the host are on the call in an impressive act of punctuality. BBQ’s are our Achilles. Jonny H has already threatened a fellow Love Island contestant before they even get to the Island.

DDL met Jonny R at 05:30 Bank Holiday Monday for some Blythburgh birding. Then had a raptor fest whilst surveying, with Red Kite, Osprey and a Monty’s/ Pallid style harrier in quick succession.

DDL had Tawny Owl on BBS Survey in Queen’s Wood, North London, then met one of his other 'friends' at Walthamstow Reservoir for some birding. DDL loves Barnacle Geese goslings.

Jonny H has had Nightjar locally - the first for 48 years. Then Common Sand and Cuckoo amongst 61 species on patch Sunday morning. An abundance of Whitethroat but no Lesser Whitethroat:

DDL and Jonny H reminisce about the Largo Bay scoter flock and the educational birds including Stejneger’s. DDL is obsessed with brown flanks and Jonny H says Jonny R and the Stejneger’s are subtly distinctive.

Jonny R is sadly reliable; Micklemere, Blythburgh and bike birding. Every week. This week's highlight included; Turtle Dove in the Black Bourn valley and Spoonbill on the Blyth - a full fat patch tick.

Mallard x Rosybill Pochard also features again in Jonny R’s birding week:

Jonny R got up at 03:00 on Global Big Day to find crakes and Savi’s Warbler. Which weren’t there.

We shoutout Daniel Branch and his bedroom Spoonbill from last week as well as statistician Nick Moran.

We’ve had 8803 listeners so far this season, with an average of 463 listens per episode and a peak of 1k listeners for the Doc Collinson episode!

Guest have included; Simon Tonkin, Brian McCloskey, Nick Moran, Amy Schwartz, Dame Dawn Balmer, Doc Collinson, Paul French and of course co-hosts DDL and Jonny Holliday.

As regular listeners will know; we are in charge of the UK 250 Club - it was bequiffed to us via founding member Ben Miller, who knew we were a safe 3 pairs of hands. So far, we’ve got t-shirts, hoodies and beanies which can be ordered:

Pin badges are at the design/ manufacture stage and we have our own Bubo url; https://bubo.org/uk250

Pretty impressive stuff when you consider some of us are employed full time, raise children, hold a clean driving license and aren’t even doing community service at the moment.

So, more to follow on the website - when I get some spare time from working, birding, running and generally smashing it right up. As well as instructions on how to order stuff.

We also need to immediately shout out of Emerald Isle brothers and sisters and the newly formed; IR 230

We thank Carly for her support - in actually producing U.K. 250 merch. A couple of £’s per sale will also go towards our open Tern the Tide JustGiving page.

The next Tern the Tide will be a march connecting Burnham Deepdale to Coquet Island - sharing some of the same route we took back in April 2014 on the first Dove Step. More on that in due course...

Lee Woods prefers Scoter to Lapwings - so #Wildfowl #elite

Ian Bennell is a master statistician and knows how many Velvet Scoter he’s seen:

We promise to have U.K. 250 merch at Migfest - which might happen?

We valiantly completely to forget to make predictions at the end of the episode. We do discuss the value of submitting records, including historic records via BirdTrack and eBird.

Remember, this is your space too and we’ve had no bad feedback or complaints from good looking people…

Thank you to everyone who has listened, guested, contributed, tweet and generally supported Birders Twitter. We genuinely appreciate it.