Review of the Year, 2025 - part one

Middle Spotted Woodpecker, Berlin

Sanderling, Filey, January

This post covers January - March 2025. See upcoming posts for the rest of the year's highlights.

A quiet start to the year (birdwise, at least!) - mostly involving the regular surveys on the Humber - was enlivened greatly by our fifth School of Birding in February. What an absolute cracker it was; an exceptionally wonderful team of ten, and the full spectrum of both Highlands weather and classic birds and birding.

White-tailed Eagle, Strathspey

Heavy snowfalls, plunging temperatures, blue skies and sunshine, all conspiring to provide perfect backdrops for a memorable week. As well as it being such a pleasure to see everyone blossoming as birders - collectively, and very much in their own individual ways - we happily cleaned up with all the species we were hoping to enjoy as a team. Another fantastic week in what feels like my second home these days.

 

Plenty more surveying upon return, and my first local guiding days of the year, at the fantastic Tophill Low reserve in East Yorkshire. These wetland and woodland days are a new element of my guiding calendar, and were a joy to lead - in a traditionally quiet time of the year locally, to have such quantity and quality of wildfowl, plus various marshland and woodland species made for great birding. More here.

   

(My Tophill Low days for this coming February are up on the YCN website now - have a look here if you'd like to join me!)

Ruddy & Common Shelducks, North Cave 

By mid-March, it was time to head for Berlin, for a little over a week of messing around, ostensibly with Goshawks (but with plenty of other kinds of fun thrown in). Staying in the centre of town, our initial mission was recon Tiergarten - the huge park that dominates the heart of the city - and pinpoint all the Goshawk territories before Rich's group arrived. We also spent a day on nearby Peacock Island, on the south-west fringes of the city, to likewise prepare for guiding activities there.

   

We factored in plenty of time for enjoying the city by day and night, and for socialising (great to see Patrick and especially my old friend Mitch!), and it was great trip on all accounts. Very much looking forward to guiding a group there this coming March (which happily sold out long since, but check for '27 dates in the spring...)

   

(listen out for joggers, people on their lunchbreak, and kids from the kindergarten in the above clip - yep, this is how close you can get to Berlin's Goshawks...)

Great night here in #Berlin with my brothers Rich and Mitch - by beautiful coincidence, the brilliant Patrick Franke was giving a talk and we got to evangelise birds over beers late into the night with him and the wonderful Manuel Tacke. The Venn diagram was on fire! #Eurobirders

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— Mark James Pearson (@markthebirder.bsky.social) 19 March 2025 at 08:58

Sand Martin at Filey 

A spare couple of days birding on the coast at the end of the month quenched my thirst for early trans-Saharan migrants and also involved some good raptor vismig (see here), before it was time to prep for the next Highland adventure...

Scaup, North Cave Wetlands 

(Part Two to follow soon)