With the 2010's drawing to a close, I thought it would be a great time to look back at the past ten years. There are just so many to choose from and it was near impossible to decide just one for each year. But here is what I've decided. As I only started this blog at the end of December 2014, the only place some of these moments have been written are in my wildlife diaries. So it may be the first time you may have heard of these moments. I hope you enjoy!
2010: I had just left college during 2010 and to celebrate, I decided to stay for a month with my Aunt Barbara, who at the time was living in Texas. I had never been to the USA before or since, so it was going to be one hell of an adventure. In October of 2010, Barbara took me on a tour around Texas. We went high, climbing Enchanted Rock (which was one of the tallest natural structure in Texas and was an extremely hot and tiring climb) and we went low, visiting the remarkable underground rock formations of the Inner Space Caverns. I encountered many great Texan wildlife from monarch butterflies to scissor- tailed flycatchers. I even spent one morning at a sewage works where I recorded 37 species of bird in a few short hours with a local group.
However, what really topped my Texan adventure was seeing over a million Mexican free-tailed bats leave their roost site, which was a busy motorway bridge. My aunt's neighbour, at the time, was a lovely lady who happened to be one of the main people who studies these bats at various roosts around the state. On my final week, she kindly took me and Barbara to this bridge not too many miles away from the state capital of Austin. With so much traffic going over and under the bridge, its incredible to imagine that anything would want to call this man-made structure home, let alone a million bats. But the signs of their existence were everywhere splatted and smeared along the road beneath it. Bat guano! There was certainly a distinctive smell lingering in the air from it. Then, as night fell, the bats left their roost in a seemingly endless stream heading out into the countryside. It was quite a sight and it was pretty hairy at times when they were dodging the traffic and an incoming freight train, but it kind of added to the magic in a strange and unforgettable way.
2011: This was the year I started volunteering at Strumpshaw Fen. Before I took on my usual Reception Hide shifts, I was here monitoring that year's marsh harrier breeding season. After one such survey session in June, I was walking back from Tower Hide, when I noticed a group of people with two standing atop of a bench, all looking at something in the water behind a cover of reeds. "What can you see?" I asked. "Otters!" came the reply. In seconds, I was up on that bench with them and I saw my very first otter accompanied with a cub! Since that day, I have had many encounters with these magical animals, but I will never forget how I saw my first. I also like to mention two other encounters, one with a stoat at Cley rolling bird eggs with its nose, and the other being a female hen harrier sitting on a pile of cut reeds right in front of Reception Hide at Strumpshaw one foggy December morning, staring right at me with its beautiful yellow eyes.
2012: During May of 2012, I travelled to the Cairngorms in Scotland with my parents. The mountains were snowy peaked still, providing some great scenery throughout our time here. Within a span of a week, we saw bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth, Slavonian grebes at Loch Ruthven, but no Nessie at Loch Ness. However, my moment of the year had to be seeing a couple of male capercaillies sticking their heads out of two different bushes with a group at Loch Garten and then travelling up to the top of the snow-covered Cairngorm mountain via a funicular railway, seeing ptarmigan through someone's scope, all in the span of one morning!
2013: This a tricky one. 2013 was a great year for butterflies. Before I even had a blog, I set myself a challenge to see as many species I could find in one year. I've since lost track how many I've exactly seen, but I can remember quite a few including highlights such as clouded yellow, marbled white, silver-studded blue, swallowtail, grayling, chalkhill blue, silver-washed fritillary and white-letter, purple and green hairstreak as well as many more common species.
2013 was also a great year for birds. There was a male red-footed falcon at Lakenheath in May and a wryneck at Strumpshaw in August. But it all kicked off in September when I set myself on another challenge, to see as many species within in one month. In the end, I managed to get a total of 93 species which included; osprey, curlew sandpiper, bittern, kingfisher, garganey and, best of all, a Wilson's phalarope (at Cley), which is an extremely rare American visiting wader.
2014: I had two big, memorable holidays in 2014. First, was a trip to Northumberland, which included a boat trip to the Farne Islands to see colonies of puffins and other seabirds (there was also an incident when someone slipped and broke their leg at one of the islands, in which we somehow got him aboard the boat before taking him back to the mainland). The other was a trip to southern Spain and Gibraltar with a Naturetrek group. It was September yet again and just like the previous year, I was doing another bird species count challenge, only this time, with the aid of this particular holiday, I was able to destroy 2013's record with 159 species. The holiday itself was pretty good, seeing the barbary apes at Gibraltar, large numbers of migrating vultures, eagles and other birds, flamingos, two-tailed pasha butterflies and a pod of long-finned pilot whales!
2015: This was the year my blog really kicked off and when I took you guys along for the ride as I shared my wildlife encounters with you. From badgers to fen orchids, long-eared bats to short-eared owls and bird's-nest fungi to water shrews, 2015 was quite an eventful year. I even appeared on set of Springwatch Unsprung at Minsmere as an audience member with my dad. So how do you single out a single memory from such a great year of wildlife watching? Well, with a boat trip down along the Cornish coastline seeing seals, gannets, Manx shearwaters and Risso's and common dolphins of course! We had two pods of common dolphins follow our catamaran as we sailed across the clear blue Cornish sea!
2016: On the year I turned 30, I celebrated by going on another Naturetrek holiday, this time to the Vercors (an alpine region of south-east France). I had an amazing time here. We saw so many species of butterfly and orchid (including ghost orchids and Apollo butterflies), as well as Alpine ibex, Alpine marmot and chamois. Besting them all, however, was an unforgettable night at a small fishing lake seeing beavers. We waited at this lake until dusk and a full moon rose over the mountains. Marsh frogs hopped around my feet, while nightjars and bats swooped above my head. Songs of golden orioles, nightingales and turtle doves could be heard. And then, out of nowhere, I spotted this floating shape right in front of me a few metres from the shore. It was a beaver! Me and this woman from the group had the best views of anyone that night. It was one of the best nights of my life!
2017: I had a lot of personal issues regarding money and my photo storage problem sprouting their heads in this year, it was kind of difficult to enjoy my wildlife watching outings. Thankfully, I did have some great encounters, especially with insects and spiders as I was doing a year-long invertebrate challenge, which included emperor moths, fen raft spiders, minotaur beetles and grizzled and dingy skippers. My highlight for 2017, though, has to be seeing my first ever golden and white-tailed eagles in Scotland. The latter was more memorable as I was about to go on a boat trip around the islands of the Firth of Larne (which included Mull) to see them. I had gotten the life jacket and waterproof gear I was provided on, when out of nowhere, a chorus of excited shouting was directed to me. "Eagle!" And low and behold, there was a white-tailed eagle flying like a barn door soaring in front of a nearby mountain behind the small fishing village we were in! That boat trip wasn't really needed now, but I went anyway, in which I experienced the force of a tidal whirlpool.
2018: Last year wasn't exactly a vintage year for me. I really didn't have too many outstanding memories that could match the previous years in this decade. I had great sightings such as king eider, purple heron, wryneck and lesser yellowlegs, but nothing that would live long in the memory. But, if there was one thing that I won't forget in a hurry is raising several emperor moth caterpillars into adult moths. It was a frantic summer of gathering bramble branches with fresh leaves and removing their poop and the branches that they've completely demolished of leaves as they got bigger and bigger in a short span of time. It was all worth it though, as most of them emerged as adults in the spring of 2019.
2019: It is very hard to pick a single impactful memory for 2019. If there was anything to remember this year by, it has to be orchids. My latest challenge has seen me find 19 out of the 23 species found in Norfolk. But which one is the pick of the bunch? Which was the one that will really made it hard not to forget? Well, I have three contenders. First was travelling to Suffolk to see the extremely rare military orchid on an open day. Second, was travelling north to the north Norfolk coast the next day to see the equally rare man orchid. And lastly, possibly the one I nearly missed completely if it wasn't for you guys, the extremely tiny creeping-ladies tresses! It was third time lucky when I went to see that one!
And there you have it. Ten very eventful years. Here's to the 2020's and to another new year! I hope it will be another decade of great wildlife encounters. With the effect of global warming becoming an even greater threat, who knows what the future will hold.
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