My peregrinations were taking me along the Hobbs Beach Track and away from the island’s wooded section, where my target passerines lurked. I retraced, peered into the empty little penguin nest boxes on my way and headed uphill to the trees. I didn’t get that far before my next lifer, not a passerine, but a duck.

Even New Zealand‘s mobile waterfowl had a hard time against the coming of Man. Most of them could fly but their principal predator, the swamp harrier, hunted from the air. It was more effective to freeze and let camouflage do the work. This is futile in the face of a dog, cat or a mustelid. What’s one of those? It’s a stoat, weasel or ferret. They’re all totally alien to the country and they’re not exactly pets gone wild. Nor are they farm animals.

Get this. Some idiot decided ferrets would control rabbits.

Even bigger idiots introduced them to do this and, as with the Queensland cane toad, that’s about the last thing the creatures did, preferring instead to go for sitting ducks – literally. So the brown teal is now critically endangered; there are fewer than 1,000 in the entire world. They’re as good as extinct. There’s really no way back from that low a number.

Oh, some people – very fine people – try but the future history is written. Rising populations of all the world’s endangered species does not fit with 7 billion human beings, doubling every 50 years and doubling its per capita resources grab even faster. Something will have to give, some choice will have to be made. A crunch, environmental not credit, will come and the smart money is on Homo sapiens to muscle its way to the top of the pile. We’ll sacrifice the lot before being the last to go down.

So, while it could, my life list went up by one with a pair of brown teal lurking on the edge of a pool in New Zealand’s biggest zoo. I didn’t feel guilty about ticking them, nor any of the other survivors, in those circumstances. There wouldn’t be another chance.

And the ducks were where they were supposed to be. A few centuries earlier I’d have been tripping over them. Just like our ospreys, red kites and sea eagles, and California’s condors, all of which are also on my life list. They look like success stories now but the spectre of the crunch looms for them too. ⇐ ⇒

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.

Secret Santa (Ta, Jimmy)

Here’s what I want for Christmas (next Christmas will also do) in no particular order:

• rent-free accommodation
• the next species to go extinct in the regulation 4 years
• a $500 win at poker
• negative population growth
• 400 visitors a month to this website
• not a single raptor shot, poisoned or snared
• a sale of Let the Time Come
• Southampton to be in the Premier League
• my shares to be back at the level I bought them
• all creatures safely off the critically endangered list
• ooh, let’s say £10,000 on the Premium Bonds
• more trees
• some interest in any of my books
• no litter
• a holiday
• our reconnection with the planet
• my front tooth straightened (a variation on that old saw)

and I’m sure that’s not all.

Thank you.

Friday the Thirteenth continued my run of bad bird luck with just eastern spinebill and white-bellied sea eagle of note right at the death. I’d drifted east to the Freycinet Peninsula by then via Oatlands and Campbell Town, the latter showing some interesting art and both being sort of old. The B34 across to Freycinet climbed past Lake Leake, only accessible by dirt track, and down to Moulting Lagoon, which defines the peninsula.

I was on the eastern seaboard Tasman Highway, heading north to Bicheno for the road down the other side of the lagoon. My target was the national park, where mid-afternoon might have been OK to find camping, but it was a Friday and the place had been booked solid for weeks. Rather than paying the entrance fee to Freycinet just for that evening, I checked out Coles Bay right next door. On the other side of the village BIG4 Iluka did have a pitch for me, and a convivial tavern.

That filled in the evening schedule. From the verandah I watched the sun sink over Great Oyster Bay, of which Moulting Lagoon is the northern extension. This was named for the swans and shelducks that shelter during their flightless late summer.

The general public is ignorant of this aspect of most wildfowl’s life cycle. Post-breeding adult birds replace all their flight feathers at once and so need a safe haven while they’re vulnerable. This is why the drakes also moult through an eclipse plumage that renders them as camouflaged as the females. Mid-February may have been a touch early to catch this spectacle but bushland in and around the campsite brought me back to native passerine species after the European domination of the central farming belt.

On Saturday morning I explored more of this bayside eucalypt scrub that stretched away north from the settlement. Spotted pardalotes joined the other Pardalotus species that had been so memorable at Tinderbox, but it was a couple of currawongs that got the heart racing. As at Mount Wellington, I was hopeful of black currawong but this time my view was lengthy enough to pick out white wing patches, which gave me clinking currawong. A great name, but only a subspecies of the widespread grey, which is almost black on Tasmania.

I didn’t retry the national park because the better idea of Maria Island had climbed my pecking order. This was some 40 miles south but 70 by road to the ferry at Triabunna, and I had to start off north past Moulting Lagoon again to get off the peninsula. This brought me Caspian tern and brown falcon to make a reasonable haul for the day already.

But before any further improvement to that list was the small matter of my ever-pressing flight out of Auckland. A detour even further north to Bicheno would take me to a wireless hotspot, I hoped. I had good reason to expect: it was listed on an Internet voucher I’d bought in the Hobart café. My luck happened to be in. That was nice. ⇐ ⇒

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.

New for all sorts of my lists, this bird has been reported several times recently before I connected with it this afternoon. The most surprising of these lists is this year’s on-foot, which has raced up to 98 in the month since I added redpoll. Also today, the nature reserve had a common gull; last week a kingfisher zipped along the rhyne behind Homebase; and before that was a
Portbury merlin.

I remember that day: a loose hide shutter smashed me on the head. Not much damage to the bonce but my teeth still feel weird.

My Wharf list also stands at 98. I wonder what will be the next two species. I haven’t had Mediterranean gull yet and maybe one of the local ringed plovers could drop in. That’s my guess.

Not much else has been happening. My last trip was a double dip on the Black Down pallid harrier and Chew Valley spotted sandpiper. Yesterday evening Amy King gave the Bristol Ornithological Club an excellent talk on Somerset’s crane reintroduction. That would be a good day out. In fact I’m off to Steyning next week and I like to drop down to the Dorset coast and drive along; the birds favoured spot of Aller Moor, between Bridgwater and Langport, would be on my way.

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.

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.

Before watching the mighty Saints crush the once mighty Leeds at the rather excellent Hort’s in Broad Street, I took in the Royal West of England Academy. You can get a closer look at Damien Hirst’s Charity up on the balcony. I didn’t know there were huge coins littered around its base – pre-decimalised coins too. That took me back.

The real reason for forking out a fiver was the Mary Fedden exhibition but Lisa Milroy stole the show. Her geishas are hilarious. Of interest to this blog, the Elisabeth Frink room showed some birdy aquatints. Her goshawk fooled me but the osprey was unmistakable. I got the long-eared owl wrong too. Tut-tut.

Downstairs were the most amazing pencil line creations. I forget the name of the artist but he started from a few straight lines and tried to draw lines right next to them but complete with errors. With subsequent lines he then allowed the errors to accumulate or dissipate as they would. Hard to describe but it looked painstaking, especially when he used the same technique for a self-portrait!

How do pockets kings relate to this? They don’t but today I bust out of a poker tournament when my kings hit a pair of aces. This is not as rare as it sounds: about once every 220 hands you get a pair of kings and something like 1 in 24 of those will lose to aces. It’s also happened to me at the Gala Casino within ten minutes of the tournament starting. That made the trip in to Bristol worthwhile!

What was unusual today was that a third hand also went all-in, not from the usual idiot looking to treble up but from pocket queens. I can’t do the maths to say how unlikely that is. I don’t expect to see it again.

I do expect to see Saints win again. The next televised game is Birmingham a month away and not much later they travel to Cardiff. Might fork out to get over the Bridge to that one.

I should know that when a weather forecast says showers, it translates to solid, incessant rain in Welsh. That’s what I got from Rhayader, past the Elan Valley, through Devil’s Bridge and all the way to Cardigan. It only eased there and on past Moylgrove. All the time I was thinking, “I’m only two or three hours from Bristol. I can always run back there.”

But I pushed on and found a £25 B&B in Fishguard despite recent assertions that such a price was no longer possible.

Did I see anything through all this precipitation? One red kite, just in Herefordshire, before I hit Knighton. Another somewhere through Powys and a wheatear as I entered Ceredigion. But above all, the streams were in full spate and silver filaments decorated the hillsides. That’s the reward for rain over mountain roads. Wouldn’t swap it for a lottery win.

Even so I hoped that the weather would allow a clearer Tuesday at the tip of Pembrokeshire.