Beddington Farmlands visit

It was our work xmas curry yesterday and it was quiet on the quoting front so I stretched the day out to London by stopping off for breakfast at Knepp (had a wilding full English and bought some wilding meat for xmas) and spent the afternoon at Beddington Farmlands, the first visit this year I think. 49 species of nearly 900 individuals HERE   with highlights including Green Sandpiper, Lapwings, Shelduck, Firecrest and Chiffchaff. Also had a quick walk round Beddington Park too. 

Lapwings hanging in there (11 birds on North Lake) 

Urban birding habitat shots (above and below) 

The once great wetland of 100 acre (with hundreds of wintering Teal and breeding Lapwings) was more or less completely dry. 

The Sussex Serengeti

I've been reading the Birds of Sussex by the Sussex Ornithological Society over the last few weeks. It's a superb county avifauna and I'm reading it like a novel, cover to cover, as the introductory sections and the species accounts are pretty gripping and the format of atlas maps, incredibly high quality photographs and concise accounts with introductory anecedotes makes for an absorbing read. It covers records up to 2011 so it's also really interesting to see how things have changed in the last 14 years. 

I was particularly intrigued by the references to the Ramsar sites in the Arun Valley so today I left the Peninsula to explore Amberley Wildbrooks, a site I have never visited before and in the evening visited Arundel Wetland Centre for the harrier roost. 

Amberley was breath taking, the scale of the site is immense and the views from the South Downs over the flood plains covered in Fallow Deer, cattle, wetland birds, quartering Harriers and Kites and patrolling White-tailed Eagles encapsulates a vast wildness which, as the landlady of the Sportsman pub said, was like the Sussex Serengeti. I had 55 species of about 2500 individuals in about 3 hours HERE with highlights included the locally resident White-tailed Eagles, an adult Little Gull, large numbers of inland wintering Black-tailed Godwits and 3 Ruff in with the Lapwings. 

The pair of Hen Harriers came in to roost at Arundel and I also jammed into the female Goosander that has been around. HERE

Red Kites over Amberley (above and below)

Inland Black-tailed Godwits

Adult White-tailed Eagles 

Adult Little Gull at Amberley

Fallow Deer at Amberley

Views over Amberley from the Sportsman Pub (above) and over towards Amberley Castle (below)

Female Goosander at Arundel 080326- not a female. See HERE

Male Hen Harrier coming in at dusk at Arundel 

Weekend Round-up

Spent most of the weekend uploading this year's bird and other wildlife records from iRecord, Ebird and iNaturalist onto iGoTerra HERE but got in a garden birding session on Saturday morning HERE where the highlights included 5 Fieldfare, 6 Redwing and a large flock of Golden Plover circling. Then we took the family to Arundel Wetland Centre so that Jacob could take some photos for his school bird photography competition and then in the evening I met up with Marc Read for night birding at Medmerry where we had a Woodcock (a Peninsula lifer) and a Barn Owl. 

Sunday was a bit of a write-off, we did some stuff around the garden in the morning before heading to London for Mia's 18th birthday party. 

The nights are relatively mild so I had the moth trap out a couple of times over last few days- a couple of Rusty-dots and a Mottled Umber was my lot. I also spent time this weekend uploading the last batch of dissection results from Mike Bailey which yielded 4 new species for the garden including a lifer for me- Summer Fruit Tortrix which wasn't even on my radar so that was interesting. Also confirmed records of  November moth (rather than November moth agg), Tuta absoluta, Blastobasis vittata, Caloptilia robustella, Coleophora peribenanderi and C.versurella . Thanks again to Mike for his intricate work. 

Woodcock at Medmerry 

Fieldfare in the garden- two of the top local year listers still need Fieldfare for the Peninsula, not a common bird locally 

Summer Fruit Tortrix, Adoxophyes orana from 16th August - lifer and according to Sterling et al, a very local species 

Jacob's photo competition entry- Dalmation Pelican at Arundel 

iGoTerra produces this useful map of the countries I've visited. Still 1585 bird species away from my target of 5000 (half of the world's birds) so need to up my game as well over the hill now and the hour glass is running out. iGoTerra profile HERE. Off to Thailand in early 2026 to get on with this. 

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 with Paul Dufour and Co 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. An additional 190 pan-species HERE.  951 species in total . 

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-11th 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 locally in addition to the Collared Prat and the in-on Pallid Swift also found Yellow-browed with Marc (well Marc found that), Grey Phalarope, Bean Geese and a few Poms on the scarcities front and local rarity finds included Hawfinch, a couple of Ring Ouzels, Little Stints, Curlew Sands, Caspian Gulls and Black Reds.   

Also a nice selection of scarce migrant moths in the garden including two Bright Waves, Toadflax Pearl (15th for Sussex), Scarce Spindle Ermine (19th for Sussex), 4 Small Marbled (28 previous Sussex records), multiple Golden-twin Spots, Ni-moths, Old World Webworms and Striped Hawkmoths, Ruddy Carpet (43rd for Sussex), Splendid Brocade (55th for Sussex), Vagrant China Mark and Bordered Straw.   

Carbon Accounts

Carbon sequestration assets: Land, managed green spaces, planting projects in 2025,  habitat improvements in Bulgaria project

Biodiversity Net  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: 3417 (78 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 (Updated 311225- now 208, 310126 update- 204 following audit) 

Little Oak Lodge Bird List: 114 (Updated 311225- now on 115) 

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)