Yes I know I only posted about this yesterday but Ken Lamberton’s latest newsletter dropped into my inbox this morning and it got me thinking about my garden bird list. I’ve been keeping a list since we moved in here. The list has a basic set of rules, each year I keep a log of all the birds that I see in the garden or see or hear from the garden. Given the urban nature of our local area it’s quite a small list, and there are a few birds on it that I’ve only ever seen/heard once:

red kite, tawny owl, hobby, merlin, green woodpecker, lapwing, little egret, cormorant, chaffinch, coal tit

The last two are very common birds and I see them all over the place outside of our garden, but hardly ever in it. Interestingly both records for those two are from 2016, which is the year with the second highest number of individually recorded species.

Ken Lamberton has a theory of quantum birding and I’m hoping that I can evoke my own here, but mentioning this and seeing if those latter two species – or any of the other eight for that matter – will make another appearance.