2026 Yearlist Week One

After 2025’s “big year” failure due to not passing driving I didn’t really have any major plans for 2026, but out of nowhere I got some motivation to really give it a go right before new year. I think that pre-new years feeling got me excited for a new list, and last year’s small count of 177 despite trying in both winter and early autumn showed me that if you “leave it till you can drive” you won’t see much at all.

With plans of finding somewhere to live and going to uni this year I don’t intend to try any crazy yearlist, but I think I’ll defo give it a better go than 2025!

So I set out with considering the context, a fairly lofty target of 100 species of bird in the first week. Perhaps unsurprisingly on the final hurdle of the week I fell far short, hoping for 7 yearticks I only managed 2! So my bird yearlist at the end of week one now sits at 95 species, just falling below my best of 99 species in my first week of 2023.

I dipped far more rare birds than I saw, but the highlights I did see included: slavonian grebe, velvet scoter, spotted redshank, purple sandpiper, goldeneye, red-throated diver, goosander, knot, grey plover, red-breasted merganser, marsh harrier, reed bunting & egyptian goose.

Additionally some other regions would consider these rare but around Devon they’re numerous, great northern divers & firecrests, I’ve seen 10+ of each so far (well mostly heard the firecrests aha).

Other animals of note included a surprise hummingbird hawkmoth in a shop on Jan 3rd, a couple red foxes and a grey seal off Hope’s Nose

Bird Year List: 95

Animal Year List: 104