Xmas bits

Not many chances to get into the field over the xmas holiday but picked up a few bits while out and about including a Barn Owl hunting near Birdham, a Badger crossing our lane, our traps in the loft caught a couple of Wood Mouse, the Firecrest is still in the garden and had good numbers of Lapwings and Golden Plovers going over the garden too HERE. 

The moth trap picked up a few bits on the milder evenings the highlight being another White-speck. 

Managed to get out with the boys looking for the Long-eared Owls that have arrived recently but no luck so tried again for them tonight and got lucky with three birds. Also got a quick look in at Birdham Pool HERE before Jacob's carol concert and today I got a session in at the Bill HERE. 6 Bottlenose Dolphin off the Bill were a local mammal tick for me. 

The Barn and Long-eared Owls were Peninsula ticks so now on 179. 

Long-eared Owl, one of three. Thermal video of them leaving the roost below.

Red-throated Divers moving off Selsey (above and below). 188  logged this morning. Also 3 Great Northern Divers. 

Razorbills on the move. Over 200 this morning off the bill. Also moving were 75 Kittiwake and over 400 Gannets

Little Grebe at Birdham Pool- seems to be a good little spot for them with several birds present

White-speck. Also getting between one and three Rusty-dot Pearls a night. 

Acleris notana/ferrugana

Mottled Umber 

The family clan all came down to visit on the day after Boxing day 

Thermal image video of the LEOs leaving the roost 

The Year in Numbers 2024

Here's a few metrics for 2024 that we use to measure our productivity at LITTLE OAK GROUP using a simple triple bottom line framework of Economic, Natural and Social Capital indicators.

Little Oak Group is a basically a small independent enterprise that specialises in wildlife friendly green space management and people friendly property management and uses profits from commerical activity to set up birding, nature conservation and citizen science projects.

Thanks to everyone in our small community and beyond for another successful year. 

The Year in Numbers 2024

ECONOMIC CAPITAL

Turnover and profit for 2024

Approx  24% profit across handled contracts from Little Oak Tree & Garden Care

Little Oak Property at approx 4.5% profit across six investments. 

Net assets

Shares across land, properties, enterprise values and holdings in stocks, bonds and cryptocurrency: approx £2 million

NATURAL CAPITAL

Land (not including property) owned

 Approx: 2 acres (one acre Sussex and one acre Bulgaria) 

Land managed indirectly/ contribution to management

 Little Oak Tree and Garden care service over 500 private gardens and communal blocks equal to approx 64 acres not including nature reserves and public spaces (large areas over 500 hectares).   

Project Species Inventory Totals 

Little Oak Lodge: 418 moth and butterfly species and 96 species of bird

Bulgaria Project :319 species (following revision) of moths and butterflies and 169 bird species

Beddington Farmlands: 2000+ species (including priority and red data species) all time. (See reports/website) 

Natural Capital Monitoring Effort Indicators

Ebird checklists in 2024: 318 (approx 600 hours)

Irecord checklists in 2024: approx 200 (approx 250 hours)

Rarities found: Crested x European Honey Buzzard (Az), Trindade Petrel, Red-eyed Vireo (Azores). A few local rarities including Hawfinches and Roseate Tern.  On the moth front Pretty white-barred was a first for West Sussex, Echium Slender was a 2^nd for West Sussex and lots of good migrants and local specialities including Starry Pearl. Feathered Brindle was first for Bulgarian I-Nat project

Carbon Accounts

Carbon sequestration assets: Land, managed green spaces, planting projects in 2024, habitat improvements in Bulgaria project

New ULEZ compliant van. Contributions to ULEZ.

Net Biodiversity Gain Accounts 

Biodiversity Net Gain Projects as above

SOCIAL CAPITAL

Blog Views

356,000 views in 2024, 2.4 million all time for Non-stop Birding (the Corvo blog gets another 14K or so mainly in October) 

Publications in 2024

Portuguese Rarities Committee Report (1), Dutch Birding articles (1) Trip Reports (5 on Ebird). 

Total Number of Project Publication Reads on Research Gate

20763 reads (all time) 150 research interest (which is 70% higher than average on this platform) 

Facebook Pages Metrices

Beddington Farmlands: 4.2 google stars, 1.9K followers

Thee Bryans: 1.1K followers

Other social media metrics

Present on Twitter and Facebook in personal capacity and comfortably engaged. 

Postscript

Personal bird and other wildlife lists

All time world bird list: 3339 (i-Go terra) 

All time world mammal list: 272 (i-Go Terra)

All time world moths and butterflies: 1451 (I-Go terra)

All time WP bird list: 728 ((Netfugl ranking 93)

All time false WP list: 946 (Netfugl ranking 43)

Azores Bird List: 255 (Ebird) 

Bulgaria Bird List: 289 (Ebird) 

Beddington Farmlands Bird List: 224 (nothing new)

Sussex/ Selsey Peninsula Bird List: 178

Little Oak Lodge Bird List: 96

Non-stop Birding Review 2024- July to December

 Here's a photo summary of the second half of 2024 on this blog which documents day to day wildlife, nature and conservation news from our endeavours at Little Oak Group.  January to June photo highlights HERE

JULY

We spent most of the month on family holiday in Australia visiting Holly's aunt and cousins and exploring. Ebird trip report HERE. Got to be one of my favourite foreign trips and already planning on going back. A few highlights included the Black Cockatoos including Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo (above) and Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo (below) 

Galah- depsite being common, still stunning

Western Spinebill - one of the 17 or so endemic species in Western Australia 

Wedge-tailed Eagle

Another highlight was visiting Broome Bird Observatory, one of the best locations on the planet for waders. Despite being out of season there were still several thousand birds around. Spot the Asian Dowitcher (above) 

Absolutely loved the mammal watching in Australia. Short-beaked Echidna (above) and Quokka (below) 

Western Grey Kangaroos 

Top of the target list was Saltwater Crocodile

An added focus of Jacob's and mine trip north to Broome was finding the famous dinosaur footprints of the region 

Isaac had a good time too

AUGUST

This month we were back to Little Oak Lodge for the start of autumn migration. Having flocks of hirundines on our garden wires was magical

Local birding highlight was this cracking adult summer Semipalmated Sandpiper on the Ferry Pool found by the local vicar

Plenty of other local autumn migrants including a good showing of Spotted Flycatchers 

Garden mothing highlights included this Starry Pearl- not a bad one for the garden list! 

Other garden mothing highlights included Oak Eggars (above), Yellow-legged Clearwing (below) and Beautiful Marbled (below that) 

In Augsust we also published the latest Portuguese Rarities Report which includes all the latest Azores records 

SEPTEMBER

There was great local birding in September, the highlight was this cracking adult male Red-backed Shrike at Church Norton 

Osprey over the garden was nice 

Plenty of autumn waders in the harbour including Whimbrels (above)

White-tailed Eagle over Pagham Harbour was a September highlight 

Meanwhile in the garden moth trap there were plenty of new moths and highlights including Blair's Mocha (above) and Marbled Fern (below) 

A trip to Corvo in late September (the 20th aniversarry of Corvo birding) produced some nice highlights including Trindade Petrel (above), Red-eyed Vireo (below) and Semipalmated Sandpiper (below that- a nice juv to compare with the Pagham adult above) 

First-winter male Bay-breasted Warbler - another highlight of the trip 

OCTOBER

A trip to the Bulgaria project in mid-October was a time of year we hadn't visited before. Black Redstarts (above) were more or less everywhere

Firecrest at Cape Kaliakra (above) and Black Stork over Kamen Bryag (below) 

Grey-headed Woodpecker at Kamen Bryag was a new species for the  Ebird hotspot 

The main purpose of the visit was to carry on with creating the wildlife pond on the project plot. Need to return in Spring 2025 to finish this off. 

Meanwhile back at Little Oak Lodge we compelted the garden office and the garden shed. Garden birding highlights included a flock of 8 of so Hawfinches regularly flying over the garden.  

October garden moth trapping highlights included this Echium Slender (above), a 2nd for West Sussex and plenty of migrants and local specialiites including Flame Brocade and Radford's Flame Shoulder (below) 

NOVEMBER

The theme of November was the crytallising winter scenes with Brent Geese flocks and other waterbirds arriving locally and filling up the harbours 

There seemed to be plenty of Dartford Warblers (above) and Rock Pipits (below) around 

White-speck was the highlight of the garden mothing(above with a Large Wainscot) 

DECEMBER

The birding highlight of the month (so far) was this Black Brant, once again found by the local vicar (he is doing something right, I might need to start going to church if I want to find something good round here) 

Pretty-barred White- a first for West Sussex. Nice to find a mega moth (and also had a 2nd for the county in October and plenty of other rarities). The garden moth list ended on 410 with an additional 8 species of butterfly.  So a pretty good result on the moth front. The goal for 2025 is to actually find a decent local bird which so far I have skillfully managed to not achieve. 

The local population of Cattle Egrets appeared to disperse across the Peninsula with flocks visible from the main road feeding amongst the local livestock