The Year in Numbers 2025

Here's a few metrics for 2025 that we use to measure productivity at LITTLE OAK GROUP using a simple triple bottom line framework of Economic, Natural and Social Capital indicators.

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

Highlights this year included publishing in Nature/Scientific Reports Journal and two articles in Dutch Birding (Publication page updated HERE), finding a nice haul of rarities with friends including the Western Palearctic's first Lesser Striped Swallow and Oman's first Paddyfield Pipit, making good progress with the wildlife recording and conservation work at project sites and plenty of World lifers across the groups that I list including 76 birds,  6 new mammals, about 15 new herps and 299 leps (iGoTerra updated HERE).  

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

The Year in Numbers 2025

ECONOMIC CAPITAL

Turnover and profit for 2025

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

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+ (3000m2) 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: 647 (229 new)  moth and butterfly species and 114 (18 new) species of bird HERE

Bulgaria Project :427 (108 new) of moths and butterflies and 182 (13 new) bird species

Natural Capital Monitoring Effort Indicators

Ebird checklists in 2025: 405 (318 in 2024) (approx 800 hours)

Irecord checklists in 2025: approx 200 (approx 250 hours)

Rarities found: Lesser Striped Swallow in Kuwait with Vince and Julian (First for the WP), Paddyfield Pipit in Oman with Wisebirding group (First for Oman, 3rd? for Greater WP), 6 Short-tailed Shearwaters in Kuwait with Vince, Julian, Omar and Co (6th-12th record for WP),  Rustic Bunting in Bulgaria (5th record), Caspian Stonechat in Bulgaria (7th record),  also helped out Pallid Swift id at Selsey (2nd for Sussex if accepted) and re-located the Collared Pratincole from Hampshire at Medmerry (5th for Sussex). Also Hume's Warblers in Kuwait and Oman and Olive-backed Pipit in Oman (with Anand).  

Also a nice selection of scarce migrant moths in the garden. 

Carbon Accounts

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

Net Biodiversity Gain Accounts 

Biodiversity Net Gain Projects as above

SOCIAL CAPITAL

Blog Views

1.06 million views in 2025 , 3.46 million all time for Non-stop Birding. 

Publications in 2025

Nature/Scientific Reports (1), Dutch Birding articles (2) Birdwach Magazine (1), Birdguides (1) Portuguese Rarities Committee Report (1), Trip Reports (6 on Ebird). 

Total Number of Project Publication Reads on Research Gate

23,246 reads (all time) 191.8 research interest (which is 73% 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. 

LISTING 

Personal bird and other wildlife lists

All time world bird list: 3415 (76 new including revision and Avilist update)  (iGoTerra) 

All time world mammal list: 278 (6 new)  (iGoTerra)

All time world herp list: 119 Reptiles and 24 Amphibians (iGoTerra)

All time world moths and butterflies: 1750 (299 new)  (iGoTerra)

All time WP bird list: 744 (16 new)  ((Netfugl ranking 75 from 93)

All time Greater WP list: 794 

All time false WP list: 963 (17 new)  (Netfugl ranking 38 from 43)

Azores Bird List: 255 (Ebird) 

Bulgaria Bird List: 302 (13 new)  (Ebird) 

Beddington Farmlands Bird List: 224 (nothing new)

Selsey Peninsula Bird List: 206

Little Oak Lodge Bird List: 114

Back on the Peninsula

A bit of local twitching today with two new local lifers , the Black-necked Grebe that has finally been pinned down onto Pagham Lagoon and a Snow Bunting was found at East Head so I headed over there with Ian this afternoon. Now on 205 for the Peninsula and 192 for the year. 

Male Snow Bunting (above)

Black-necked Grebe (above) 

Female/imm Black Redstart on houses at Pagham 

Oman wrap

 

Got a few birding ticks in Oman. Twenty world ticks in total which takes me to 3575 (although I need to update to Avilist taxonomy). Oman is outside the Classic WP but within the Greater WP so I thought I would start my Greater WP list which is a combination of 744 (75 ranking) in the Classic WP and an additional 50 in Oman taking me to 794 for the Greater WP. I also added a few to my false WP list which is now on 963 (38 ranking).  Fallen in love with Arabia so definitely need to sort out a trip to Saudi Arabia next. 

Will add the other wildlife lifers at the end of the year as need to update for the whole year. 

Oman Landscapes and People

 A few landscape shots (from north to south) and some people pics. The route of our tour is traced HERE and the itinerary summary is on the Wise Birding Site HERE. 

The Al-Hajar Mountains in the North (above and below), desert mountains and the home of Omani Owl

Wadi Bani Habib (above) on the Sauq plateaux (below) in the Al-Hajar- the habitat of northern specialities such as Plain Leaf Warbler, Scrub Warbler and Arabian Babbler

The immense wetlands on Masirah Island and the Barr al Hikmen peninsula provide habitat for the largest concentrations of waders in Arabia

Going South we crossed seemingly endless barren gravel desert with a couple of resthouses ( Al Ghaftain above) and oasis ( Muntasar below) where migrants were concentrating

Fairly typical scenes on the long drive south through the gravel deserts

As we drove further south we crossed the edge of the Rub al Khali aka the 'Empty Quarter', the largest sand dune complex in Arabia which stretches into Saudi (photo by Paul Alfrey)

Our last dry desert lansdscapes (the northern foothills of the Dhofar Mountains)near the Yemen Border at Mudday before we crossed over the Dhofar mountains into the comparatively lush Salalah plain and south facing Dhofar slopes and wadis (below)

Wadi Darbat

The sink hole at the Yemen Serin site 

Desert Owl habitat (above and below) 

Verreaux's Eagle habitat

Oman scenes (above and below) 

Group pic

Dave and Chris (above and below)

Stalking Great Knots

Gordon

Anand in a wadi

The food was mainly Indian (also had Lebanese one night, above) but we tried a few Omani dishes including my favourite Mutton Mandi (photos by Stephen Culley) 

Oman Other Wildlife

As usual while birding we were side hustling the leps and herps. There were a few nice butterflies around and we managed to get the lepiled up a few nights including in desert wadis while we were owling. So far got 61 species roughly identified on I-Nat HERE including some really nice looking species. All observations HERE. 

Lime Swallowtail

White Pearl Emperor

Yellow Pansy

Blue Pansy

Plain Tiger 

Pioneer Whites

Hippotion rebeli

Gregson's Dart

Maltese Bloom

Hyperthyra lutea

Ozarba tamsina

Anderson's Rock Agama

Arabian Chameleon

Jayakar Lizard

Oriental Garden Lizard

Rock Gecko sp- lots of these around. The I-Nat AI has this as Guweira Semaphore Gecko but not validated yet. 

Eastern Sand Gecko - I think

Scorpions were common in the desert at night especially in the north. Possibly Black-tipped Thick-tailed Scorpion (above) and possibly Black-tailed Alligator-backed Scorpion (below). They were easy to find using an ultra-violet light as they glow luminiscent yellow .