The Lincolnshire Bird Club

The Footit Challenge is about finding as many birds as you can during January, by foot from your home. This was my first year of doing this and the same for Phil Espin and Andy Sims; we were able to put a lot of effort into this as we work part time and Jan has been very quiet. There are three levels of challenge: 1 mile radius from home, 2 miles or 3+. First you enter a possible target and then go out to try to achieve it and submit your lists weekly to the website. Phil, Andy and I all exceeded our targets - which might suggest they were all too low. However, we all found that the more effort you put in the more birds you see and next year our targets will be higher and less achievable. I set myself a target of 60 and connected with 68 species; some of the omissions are as notable as what is seen and I failed to find Tawny Owl, Siskin and Canada Goose though I know they're all in my 2 mile radius somewhere. If you're interested in the idea have a look at:

http://birdingbyfoot.blogspot.co.uk/

However, this comes with a health warning: it becomes a little addictive and your partner will start to question your mental health as you plod off into the wind and rain yet again and you will also become leaner and fitter than you were just after Christmas - and it's also a lot of fun. I'm sure Andy and Phil will agree.

Also, if you enter your daily sightings onto BirdTrack http://blx1.bto.org/birdtrack/main/data-home.jsp you're contributing to the national and county database especially for those commoner species which tend to be under-reported.

John

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Lincolnshire Birds https://www.flickr.com/photos/120340949 ... 8078912016
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Contact: recorder_north@lincsbirdclub.co.uk

After an enjoyable month of "Footit" I finished up on 79 species, this was for the 1 mile radius from my house.
Despite much effort in the last week I did not add anything after Woodcock on 24th.
I failed to find two of my original 75 target species, Kingisher and Linnet, but scored with six which I had not expected, Red-crested Pochard, Bittern, Woodcock, Snipe, Lesser Black-backed Gull and Nuthatch.
During the month I spent 85 hours on Footit and submitted 1212 records to Birdtrack.
I was able to spend more time than anticipated due to only one days work in the month.
I will continue with the Footit during the year, every year I do a patch list which is on foot from my house with average year list of 117, and will definitely take part again next year.
I am also taking part in the "Patchwork challenge" which involves working a patch of no more then 3 square kilometres and runs for the whole year. Details of this can be found at http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

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Regards,

Andy.

I had a great time doing the Footit Challenge. My main focus was the three miles plus from my own home category. I set myself a target of 100 and achieved 101 species. I had to work hard and birded on 19 days out of the 31 days of the month. I covered 195 miles with long trips out to Theddlethorpe Brickyard Lane for Shore Lark, Pyes Hall for Hen Harrier and Humberston Fitties (a 32 miler). I was gutted at Humberston when I failed to locate a wintering ruff, they've wintered there for years. Is it just me, or is there one there this winter?

One of the aims of Footit is to encourage people to submit Birdtrack lists and I submitted 38 altogether comprising 1166 records. All that data will go to LBC for the 2014 report. I also learnt a lot more about the January 2014 status of species in my area than I would otherwise have done.

In order to give JRC some friendly competition I also did a 2 miles from home list as he did and got 70 species, 2 more than him. He had 3 I didn't (snipe, herring gull and chiffchaff) so the total in our local area could easily have been 73 plus.

I'll keep up with birding on foot through the year, in many ways its a lot easier than using a bike.