This is a bit of a crappy photograph taken on my iPhone, which is not a patch on the old Nokia (that I’m selling on eBay – hint, hint!) but it records my 115th species for the town. The list now overtakes my tally for Cupertino in California.

Greylags are surprisingly uncommon in North Somerset – so much that Chew Valley is my closest location for seeing them. Only slightly more common are merlins, one of which flew fast and low along a Portbury Wharf rhyne on the day of the swan-terrorising dog. Goosanders are rare too so today’s striking drake, also in the Marina, was a treat.

I’d struggled to identify one at Chew in the middle of last week as the light faded and then in even worse conditions at Heron’s Green picked out a scaup. “Nice one!” for Somerset species number 176 – just two behind Angus.

Ever wonder how injured birds come about? Here’s a clue. This afternoon at Portbury Wharf this sequence of pictures shows one possibility. Apologies for the quality: the action was fast and I only had my phone.

The black blob is a dog and it pretty much does a circuit of the pond in pursuit. The owner (he said he wasn’t but we’ve all heard that responsibility-evading excuse) initially tried to disassociate himself but came back when I turned the camera on him. Abuse was all he had to offer – typical dog-walker.

At first it looked like a buzzard, scattering the wigeon, teal and pintail at this West Sussex reserve. Then it banked to show a creamy white head and its true nature. It must be said that a juvenile, and maybe a female, marsh harrier has similar colouring to a dark morph buzzard so one does need the head for a positive identification. That or a good sighting to get the harrier’s quartering behaviour.

My bird landed straightaway and disappeared behind low scrub so
I didn’t get that luxury. I wondered if it had found a meal when it didn’t reappear.

This interlude followed stunning views of a female peregrine falcon, to the extent that this crappy digishot was possible (where does the yellow fringing come from?) I had to use my iPhone because my camera now discharges batteries within minutes and is effectively dead. I’ll have to work the poker tables some to manifest funds for a new one.

Both these birds of prey were new for my Pulborough list as were a couple of snipe and a calling crossbill. I may also have seen a female at the very tip of a tree but at the distance she was hard to separate from a greenfinch.

All that was on Tuesday and to continue the raptor theme, yesterday’s trip back from Steyning brought me two red kites. Not up the A34 or along the M4 as one might suppose but through the heart of Hampshire, near Old Winchester Hill. That’s my third record in that area so they are drifting south.

And they made a raptorlicious couple of days.

Lists are all the rage these days, especially those to tick before you die, so here’s my contribution. But with a difference: not for me the plain old best but, as a rabid lister, the locations to deliver the most varied bag of species. The concomitant geographic spread should also make this Top 10 truly British.

Close to Pokerbird WHQ, Somerset’s
Chew Valley Lake holds many freshwater species as well as the prospect of birds, chiefly herons, that are colonising from the continent. It’s especially good for small numbers, but a wide variety, of autumn migrants.

Over the Severn Estuary pine plantations in the Forest of Dean provide the setting for the next stop. It is not so much a location as an area, round Parkend and New Fancy View, that holds the highlights of both hawfinches and displaying goshawks. Nearby RSPB Nagshead completes a trio of spots within a two-kilometre circle.

Further north and inland, where Wales excels, Lake Vrynwy, only 60 miles west of the Black Country, is a breeding ground for many of our passerines. Away from its encircling deciduous woodlands, roads also lead up to the moors and their specialist birds.

Actually in the Midlands and easy off junction 5 of the M5 is the little Worcestershire Wildlife Trust reserve of Upton Warren. Its species list belies its small size as a mixture of salt and fresh water pools attract waders and seabirds as far inland as you can see them.

Even London gets in on the act with its excellent Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) reserve at Barnes Elms. In terms of adding to the species, it really only supplies a couple of invaders – rose-ringed parakeet and Egyptian goose. But its proximity to such a mass of population alone makes it worthy of the Top 10.

The least controversial site is RSPB Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast, where just one day’s visit can yield more than 50 species. Its scrapes and lagoons hold a first-rate selection of waders year round to add to species offshore.

The RSPB reserve at Bempton on the Yorkshire cliffs, provides a maternity ward for Britain’s important seabirds. The spring and summer months really see the colonies come alive although a visit any time of the year is good for the surrounding farmland.

Another WWT reserve at Martin Mere fills the northwest England gap, apart from being a fine day out and not just for waterbirds. The site holds a small colony of tree sparrows and the neighbouring farmland has corn buntings.

Scotland offers unique Caledonian pinewoods, home to capercaillie, crested tit and Scottish crossbill. Few places are better to see them than Abernethy, which is primarily famous for its ospreys. Yet another RSPB site at Loch of Strathbeg, coupled with nearby Rattray Head, promises Scottish coastal watching. Here are Britain’s more northerly pelagic birds and waterfowl, especially in the winter.

10 sites and the possibility of 200 species by my calculations. That’s why I call them Top.

From Friday, July 9:

“Well, technically not Angus. Dighty Water in Dundee, to be precise. But in the birding world the two are lumped together.

“I have been living here for over a year and have visited Old Montrose Pier many times without ever catching up with the birds there, so it was getting frustrating. Indeed the day before this sighting I had pretty much frozen to death in the same spot looking for a non-existent ruddy shelduck and of course there was also no sign of the kingfishers. Incidentally isn’t it supposed to be warm in the middle of July? Maybe not with an Arctic wind blowing off Montrose Basin.

“Anyway I had just about given up at Dighty Water when I caught a flash of that metallic blue fly up to a branch, registered the rusty breast and then clearly spooked the bird into departing as quickly as it had come. I loitered for a while hoping that the bird would return but only managed to register a female blackcap in the process.

“The location also provided a singing sedge warbler to give me a Dundee list of 75 – not bad for about six months. There is quite a way to go to beat my best city list of 134 for Mountain View but that’s in California and it has the advantage of being on San Francisco Bay. It also took me three years.

“And it was considerably warmer.”

From the Stratford Hide this dainty bird was barely distinguishable from a tern but later at Moreton it danced close enough to show its striking wing patterns. Even at a great distance though the creature’s tail band was enough to mark it as a gull so I was already happy with my first sighting of the species since 2007.

The gull rather overshadowed three little stints and it’s not often you can say they. Never in my case, having only ever seen singles. A semipalmated sandpiper had been reported among this trio but not while I was watching. Nor the long staying pectoral sandpiper, which had eluded me a week ago because of the injured black-headed gull.

So, on Monday morning I was packing the bins for my visit to Chew when I spied a linnet on a roof opposite the Phoenix Way gaff. A linnet alone? I got on it and, my God, it was streaky. Had it been on a Scottish saltmarsh, it would have been all twite – no question. With its back to me, the bird occasionally turned and I swear I was also looking at a small yellow bill. Twite again. This could not be. The species doesn’t occur in Somerset – nowhere near in fact. I couldn’t discern a pink rump but that’s not always obvious.

The bird flew and left me with an enigma. Twite or no twite? On a modern housing estate rooftop? It just didn’t add up. The bird certainly wasn’t a linnet and I may have to compromise and call it a redpoll. At least that’s possible although it had no black facial markings nor red crown, the latter not always showing well.

Eeeh, I don’t know.

Blagdon Lake yesterday added grey phalarope and arctic tern to the former, which lost Slavonian grebe to the latter because I’m getting fussy about county borders again. The new rule, to match the Bristol West & Portishead OS Explorer map, is that Bristol owns the mud off Portbury Wharf and by Portishead Marina lock gates.

This means the Port Marine list has really taken a hammering while Bristol races up from 73 to 79. Portbury Wharf hasn’t suffered much damage since most birds venture at least over the spartina. This sits above the mean high water that defines the boundary. The rocks at Battery Point also get a let-off for their high-tide turnstones and purple sandpipers.

I’m aiming to have all this right in preparation for the first leg of my Lundy Island cruise from Clevedon to Penarth. That will immediately sail into Bristol waters until it enters Wales about a third of the way across the Severn Estuary. Wouldn’t it be strange to add shearwaters to a city list? Fingers crossed.

I’ll delay to the next post my sightings (and more border musings) at Blagdon because of a depressing footnote to yesterday. The speed limit rises to 50 on the road past Herriotts Bridge at Chew Valley Lake. Why? There are forever birds commuting across it between pool and nature reserve. Not to mention those flying close to come to bread. And we let cars speed up, way beyond 50 as it happens. Drivers treat it as their overtaking right.

So a black-headed gull came a cropper with broken wing and broken leg. Ill-equipped though I was, I managed to pick him up and then crawl all the way through 30 and 40 mile an hour speed limits to Secret World and… who can say? Maybe because I didn’t have the right gear, he was dead on arrival.

Would it really cost so much to keep the limit at 40, or less, as it is for long stretches of the A368? And certainly to enforce no overtaking at Herriotts. Enough people park there and wander from one layby to the other that they are in danger from idiots speeding down the wrong side of the road. It’s only a matter of time for them too…

It’s simple: drive all day. And that’s pretty much what I did on a roundabout route from Steyning to Portishead. Heavy traffic past Chichester and Southampton didn’t help and more threatened on the A31 across the New Forest. My northerly escape route came into play.

This includes lunch at the Green Dragon, Brook – expensive but nice. Then the roads pass Longcross, Fritham and Ocknell Plain. Any of these, and all points between, would make a good stop, except early in the afternoon – the birding doldrums. My half hour at Milkham Inclosure yielded two types of heather and a buzzard.

The route leaves the Forest through Broomy Walk at Linwood, which I visited with no great success in 1999. (Perhaps the New Forest is not kind to me?) I ploughed on for Rockford Lake, where black terns had been reported, but, passing in the car, it wasn’t even clear that I was surrounded by the entire Blashford complex.

The rest of the day was a saga of “no room at the inn.” Swanage, Wareham, Dorchester, Crewkerne (no inns at all) and Chard all took me up to seven o’clock. Bristol was then only an hour up the motorway. I ran for home.

Going back over old emails, this one came up from a trip at the end of November, beginning of December – presumably to avoid the crowds (very wise as May three years later demonstrated). I’m not too sure about some of the sightings but…

“The highlights started on a trip to the north of the Lagoon. I didn’t have to go far. As the boat was pulling away from the main island to Lido, a couple of falcons flew over it. I only caught a glimpse of them and naturally assumed that they were peregrines but lanner may be a possibility. I guess the habitat would favour peregrine more.

“I then got a great sparrowhawk (female presumably from its size) flying over the huge hotel on the Lido beach. A couple of firecrests at Punta Sabbioni, dozens of black-necked grebes and a common sandpiper (in breeding plumage!?) completed that day’s sightings.

“Frustratingly there was a transport strike the next day, so I had to wait until the 2nd to travel down to Chioggia. It was while waiting at Pellestrina for the final boat that I became aware of Italian sparrows. I later saw them everywhere in Venice. But the most intriguing birds at Pellestrina were some pipits. They didn’t look right for meadow pipits but I couldn’t turn them into anything else. The journey to Chioggia finally provided plenty of Mediterranean gulls.

“The highlight of the week though had to be the most tantalising. I caught the train up to Treviso and at the end of the causeway at Mestre I saw a buzzard perched in a tree. As we passed, the front of the bird came into view with a really black belly and paler feathers above. I realise that this is right at the southern end of the range for rough-legged buzzard in the winter but I don’t really see that it could have been even a dark-morph common buzzard.

“So, not a great many species but some good raptors.”

Indeed. Venice is a very homo sapiens area. And canis lupus familiaris to judge by the amount of dog shit I recall.

Now five miles inland, this village was a port hundreds of years ago. Then the inevitable happened and all the cool marshes and waterways were drained for agriculture, and today the sea don’t get no nearer than Shoreham. The River Adur has been emasculated. It’s less interesting than a canal although, lacking its erstwhile sponge of flood plain, it must be a prime candidate for a surprise inundation. A surprise to 99% of us, that is.

On the subject of liquid, I can drink Harveys around here, which is a hoppy beer like Butcombe and therefore not good in quantity but delicious for one or two. Across the bypass in Beeding the Kings Head serves it and on the way back in Bramber is the Maharajah. This is the only Indian restaurant in my experience with an RSPB sticker in the window so I had to support it.

I had a pint of Kingfisher there too. Why do beers get named for birds? Kestrel lager, Tui in New Zealand, Lesser Black-Backed Gull Bitter in Bristol. (Just kidding with the last one!)

The Maharajah’s décor was pre-industrial. They were renovating so I hope it wasn’t typical. The service was… well, Indian. Regular curry-goers will know what I mean, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. But my litmus test for a new place (to me), the Madras was exemplary. It measured a perfect one on the handkerchief scale. So good was it that I sampled the Ceylon two days later and that too was five star. The prices were also reasonable, which is noteworthy for a region that scores some 10-20% higher than Bristol. For everything.

This is not a cheap holiday.