My annual encounter of the year award 2024. What species wins the prize?

I’ve renamed this annual round-up as ‘Encounter of the year’ because my emphasis these days is less about photography and more about appreciating the plants, birds and animals that Britain has for what they are.

There were times in 2024 when I thought my year would be a blank sheet of paper. It could so easily be called the ‘year with no summer’, or perhaps the ‘year with too much weather’.   I have a garden filled with nectar-bearing flowers, but my big butterfly count this year was zero. Never have I seen so few bees or butterflies. It’s also been a year when I’ve busy writing books, so spent less time blogging. But my passion for Britain’s brilliant nature is undimmed. Let’s see what 2024 provided:

January started with a problem – my knee blew out, resulting in six frustrating weeks unable to walk far. It happened just as we were in a middle of an ‘irruption’ of waxwings.  These happen about every 7-10 years when the trees and shrubs in Scandinavia and Russia fail to produce many berries, flushing berry-loving birds across to the UK. I’d caught some in Norfolk, but now I caught some others, much closer to home in Cheltenham.

February brought a  trip to the coast for both my wife and I as an escape from my incessant grumbing about my leg. It also brought a black-throated diver in winter plumage.

black-throated diver

but in the end the month was taken by a very pretty farmland bird which I have always wanted to see. It once came rather too close to the edge of extinction, but which is now making a comeback in Britain: the cirl bunting.

March brought a near-miss: I got a snippet of video of the famous ‘weed dance’ of two great-crested grebes,  but missed out on photos for the ninth year running. A spoonbill, of all things, doing impossible yoga moves became an early contender for the month.

A trip to Gloucester turned up a rather sickly green-fanged tube-web spider, and a park in my home town of Swindon turned up a hairy-footed flower bee, a species I’ve long wanted to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the month was taken – how could it not be? – by the beautiful, the legendary, Norfolk ‘ghost’ hare, a very rare silvery colour genetic morph of the brown hare.

April brought a mining bee peering out from its hole, an unexpected pair of pochard ducks, and a grass snake nestled up with an adult and a juvenile adder.  A pied flycatcher was happy to sit just feet away from me as long as I stayed still and quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But April was taken by a bird I had never  expected to see in my lifetime- Britain’s tiny and desperately threatened lesser spotted woodpecker, photographed from a camouflaged position on a public path several yards from the bird. I emphasise this – I never disturb the species I photograph, and this male was still in place when I left.

May brought dartford warbler and another deer- this time a pair of Sikka deer snuggling up to each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the very kind help of a Schedule 1 licence holder, I finally managed to photograph a smooth snake, a protected species and the only native snake species I’d never seen. An obliging kingfisher nearly made up for missing that aurora,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but in the end April’s award went to something else I’d long wanted to see – the stunningly beautiful ruby-tailed wasp, proof (if any were needed ) that nature doesn’t have to be big to be beautiful.

June brought the fulfilment of a long ambition: a visit to the Shetland Isles. They are a naturalist’s paradise, but endless torrential rain (you know it’s bad when even the Shetlanders complain) made photography and wildlife-watching hard. Gannets saluted the ferry, and a strong contender in a surprisingly crowded field appeared with a curious red-throated diver that actively swam towards me while I sheltered under camouflage netting.

Rain-soaked walks brought Great and Arctic skua. Both birds have suffered greatly as bird flu reached the northern isles, and I was lucky to have seen them at all.

Great Skua                                                                                                                                                        Arctic Skua

A Great Northern Diver, the birds Americans call the ‘Loon’ for its plaintive cry, was crisply monochrome in its summer plumage, and a blown-in Savi’s warbler and Golden Plover in its glittering summer armour were unexpected finds. Getting pelted by sleet was a small price to pay to find Edmonston’s chickweed, an unassuming plant which grows on the island of Unst and nowhere else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first-ever Whimbrel repaid a long period lying on damp moss in the rain, along with a ringed plover who nearly took the month. Another strong contender was the angelic beauty of an arctic tern hovering while it fished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A group of common seals used to people working nearby gave me my first good look at these magnificent mammals, and I thought another family of mammals had June sewn up when a group of Otters repaid hours of patient stillness with their playful antics.  But in the end, it was the soggy trip to Shetland that was, against the odds, to provide my Encounter of the Year, which I’ll show at the end.

July, by contrast, was a low point. It often sees a dip  when many wildlife families have produced their offspring, but many butterflies I would have expected to see were missing. Distant glimpses of purple emperor butterflies brought no photos. In the end July was taken by a finding a wall mason wasp in my garden.

August was in many ways another washout. Many butterflies and dragonflies flew at unusual times or in lower numbers than expected. The month was kicked off by a jumping spider.  A rare, but very distant sighting of the elusive water rail and its fluffy black chick was followed by a lesser whitethroat that finally showed itself after patient hours of waiting. But a trio of cattle egrets, which always remind me of punks rockers outside a club, won the month in the end.

jumping spider

 

September turned out to be the leanest month of all.  A whinchat and a woodlark saw us through to midmonth. A nocturnal roe deer, photographed by moonlight, was a possible, as was a hornet’s nest. But in the end I went for something much more common – an adolescent  fox cub from a family that lives near me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October brought an unusual bird. An Isabelline (Daurain) shrike popped in for a few days..  A grey wagtail shot was a contender, as were a group of jousting snipe. But the win went to a hoopoe, my first British encounter with the species. Long after it should have left for Europe it was still swallowing insects on the seafront in Swansea.

 

 

November was another slow month. A raven gave close views inthe Forest of Dean, but very poor light meant no viable photo could be taken. But that same poor weather repaid with a pair of unusual ducks, both of whom are normally seen at the coasts.- the velvet scoter was nice, but the common scoter won the month. Common it may be, but not inland on a canal.

 

And then we reached December.  Another dreary month with little to see. The foxes stayed underground and the birds stayed in the bushes. A juvenile spoonbill showed how you groom your feathers despite having a beak about as long as your neck.

But the month was taken by a post-Christmas yellowhammer, a beautiful farmland bird that we see so rarely these days that many people who can recite the old rhyme describing its call (“a little bit of bread and no cheese”) have never actually seen one.

And so to my Encounter of the year. This was the species I’d hoped to see in Shetland, on the tiny island of Fetlar, where more thean 90% of the British population of this graceful, slender-necked wader breed.  But having met people who had spent days waiting in vain next to the RSPB reserve where they are supposed to be visible, I found hope draining away. A chance encounter with a kindly birder in the Fetlar Youth Hostel gave me a tip-off I will be forever grateful for. A remote beach, and no sooner had I nestled down amongst the rocks than my target showed up – the tiny and stunningly beautiful red-necked phalarope. It was hard to see as it bobbed up and down in a large swell, and even harder to film and photograph. But in the end not one, but three phalaropes showed up and stayed for a half-hour or so. It was wonderful, but also sobering, to realise that the birds I was looking at were perhaps 2% of the UK’s entire population.

In all, 2024 saw me finish the set of Britain’s native snakes, and brought the number of bird species I’ve photographed to 248, or 40% of the British list, and in a desperately poor year for butterflies I added a much more convincing specimen of the artaxerxes subspecies of the Northern Brown Argus. All in all, the year brought 27,000 photos of 129 different British species or subspecies, of which 33 new were new for me. In fact, there may well be more – it will take me most of the winter to identify all the bees and wasps I’ve photographed. This total is not that different to 2023, which for a year with spectacularly bad weather was more than I’d expected.

But seeing 33 new species this year, and 32 last year, says that while Britain’s wildlife is in dire trouble, it is still out there. Time, fieldcraft, patience and massive amounts of luck are really all you need to connect with it, but I must give my thanks to all the friends, academics,  researchers and strangers who helped me find and watch our wonderful wildlife in 2024. What will 2025 bring?  I don’t know, but there is still a huge amount of Britain’s wildlife and plant life I have never seen.

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