24hr Bird Race & Dawn Chorus Day

On Sunday the 3rd May I decided to take to take part in my first ever 24hr Bird Race, coinciding with the already-planned International Dawn Chorus Day. Given that I'd already planned to wake up at 4am latest, I decided that I might as well get up at midnight and do the whole thing properly, giving myself some experience for the many bird races that will inevitably come in the future! In hindsight, that maybe wasn't such a brilliant idea!

Obviously, with everything going on this wasn't going to be the usual bird race, and birds would be limited to anything seen or heard in or from the garden between 00:00 and 23:59. Reluctantly I set my alarm for 23:55 and headed off for an early night! 

I didn't sleep of course. The whole of the 3 hours I had in bed were spent wide awake thinking about how ridiculous this whole idea was! I did make full use of that time though, planning how I'd go about the day to get the most birds, and also training my ears - a Tawny Owl was calling from in the park and a Coot flew past my window at 23:25! I also used the time to create a list in my head of the 30 or so 'essential' birds, and decided on a target of 40 - something that I'd need a bit of luck for but was definitely within scope.

When my alarm finally did go off at 5 minutes to midnight it was almost a relief to finally get up and do something. Bleary-eyed I got dressed, collected up my phone, camera and notebook, and headed outside. My dad had set up the hammock with sleeping bag for me the evening before, so I got tucked in and set to waiting for something to happen!

The first bird of the day came in the form of CANADA GEESE calling distantly at 00:25. That was a bird I could hear at any time through the day though, and I really wanted something nocturnal to make doing the nights worth it! Thankfully that followed soon after, with a TAWNY OWL hooting from Whiteknights Park at 00:32. However, this was proceeded by a long wait for the next bird - HERRING GULL finally started calling from somewhere off by the river at 01:13, making it 3 so far just over an hour in.

The jump of 2hrs15 between birds number 3 and 4 may seem like it was just a really quiet night, but it was actually because I fell asleep during that time! I dread to think what I might have missed in those 2 hours, but thankfully I was eventually woken up at 03:36 by a COOT flying over my head! This was a bird I thought I was likely to hear, but I hadn't counted it in the 30 or so 'must haves' so it was nevertheless great to tick it off and get one closer to my target of 40 species.

The first really unexpected find of the day came about half an hour afterwards, when a COMMON SANDPIPER flew over my head calling! This was just the 2nd garden record, after 2 flew over my head a few evenings before.

    Common Sandpiper

The Sandpiper pretty much marked the turning point for the day, as things really started picking up from there. The first ROBIN started singing at 04:05 and BLACKBIRD joined in at 04:09. These had the stage to themselves for a while, but the dawn chorus really started to get going soon afterwards. First, the local LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULLS started 'singing' at 04:36, and a WOODPIGEON got going at 04:44. A MALLARD was heard flying past at 04:46.

From around quarter to five the dawn chorus really started to reach its crescendo, with WREN, BLACKCAP, COLLARED DOVE, GREAT TIT and CARRION CROW duly noted by 05:00. The singing kept on going, and from sunrise I could start to tick off birds by sight too, so by 06:00 by list had reached 25, having added BLUE TIT, GREENFINCH, MAGPIE, GOLDFINCH, DUNNOCK, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, BLACK-HEADED GULL, FERAL PIGEON,  HOUSE SPARROW and JACKDAW. Again all expected birds but still nice to get them onto the list.

    The Dawn Chorus!

4 more 'essential' birds (STARLING, CHAFFINCH, SONG THRUSH and CORMORANT) were added in the next half an hour, followed by another unexpected sighting - STOCK DOVE - at 06:34. This was not the only Stock Dove seen throughout the day, and I expect they're probably far more regular than records show owing to my difficulty in identifying them in flight. Now it really started hotting up, with both GREEN WOODPECKER and GREY WAGTAIL added at 07:37 - the latter represented the 4th garden record. A GREY HERON was another excellent record, flying over at 06:42.

After this I failed to add anything for 20 minutes, so feeling relatively safe I left my brother to keep watch while I went upstairs to get something. Thankfully he saw nothing new, but a quick glance out the 2nd floor window revealed just one bird - a JAY flying over Palmer Park! Heading back out into the garden a PIED WAGTAIL was heard somewhere high above, and both HOUSE MARTIN and SWIFT revealed themselves at 07:10, just minutes after I said they must be here any moment! 

Quantity started to leave from this point but quality certainly did not, with a NUTHATCH briefly visiting the Common Lime just behind my garden, and my brother spotted a LITTLE EGRET flying over. These were the 3rd and 5th garden records respectively! That put me on 39, and I reached my target of 40 species by 07:35 with an EGYPTIAN GOOSE flying high NW - the first for the garden! I was amazed I'd already reached my aim so early in the morning!

    A very distant Egyptian Goose

However, things really slowed down after that. With the majority of my predicted species ticked off it was now mainly down to luck. One more bird I'd been hoping for did finally make an appearance at 08:14 though with a GOLDCREST heard singing. Being so cloudy it felt like a very poor day for raptor migration, and that really showed but thankfully I finally spotted a RED KITE on the horizon at 10:34. Eventually a couple of Kites started to show well, but they certainly took their time over it! 

    Silhouetted kite

That was my final addition of the morning, and soon after the Kite tiredness really set in, so I took a break for a couple of hours early afternoon. From 4pm I had a meeting on Zoom, through which I mainly sat in silence yawning, although twice I gave everyone a shock by leaping out of my chair and shouting about a BUZZARD and PEREGRINE that came drifting over! Soon after this I heard a PHEASANT calling from some distance away, taking me to 45. This was another first for the garden list, although I had to be careful I wasn't hallucinating! I did hear it another couple of times though, wiping any doubts. There have been so many times I think I've heard a pheasant, but it's always so sudden and distant, so I'm very glad to finally say with certainty that I've heard one!

    Peregrine Falcon

    My state of exhaustion!

From here and onward was by far the hardest quarter of the day, with tiredness really setting in and pretty much nothing happening, bar another Grey Wagtail and Egyptian Goose. In fact I didn't add anything else to the list all evening, and as it got dark I set up my recording device and microphone and got settled with a hot chocolate for a very long last few hours. As I usually do when outdoors in the evening, I made a note whenever I heard something unidentified, so that I could check on the recording the next day. Although I wrote down lots of sounds, I didn't think anything would be any good, so when the clock finally turned to midnight I was both very glad to finally go to bed but also slightly disappointed that I hadn't heard the Moorhen or any waders that I'd hoped for.

My extensive list of noises!

After I very long lie in, I got round to checking the recording for each noise I'd written down. Many of them I couldn't find at all and those that I could find were almost all mechanical or unidentifiable. Still, I posted several on a WhatsApp group to see if anything came back. As expected, almost all were useless but one recording from 23:22, which I'd nearly written off as a squeaky tyre, got a response of "maybe water rail?" Very excited that I may have found something good, I posted it on a different Noc Mig group chat and immediately got 2 experts confirm it was in fact a DUNLIN - the first ever for the garden! What a great way to wrap up the list, especially as it meant staying up till midnight wasn't pointless after all! (I did only get it confirmed and added to the list at 17:02 on Monday, but please can it still count?!)

I'm so glad I took part in the 2020 Berks Garden Bird Race, although it was honestly one of the hardest days of my entire life. I'd like to say "Yes! I did a 24hr bird race! And now I don't have to do another one for ages!" I feel I deserve to say that. Except that won't happen, as someone's decided to organise a young birders' 24hr garden bird race on the 16th! So I guess I'll just have to try to catch up on my sleep as much as I can before this whole things starts again...