As one of the people I follow on social media so aptly wrote: ‘Birdy folk do love a list. Especially a list that can be wiped clean and started afresh’. And, though I’m not by any means one of those obsessive listers who drive all over the country just to add a bird to their list, I do enjoy the challenge of walking around my local patch seeing what I can find for my new year’s list of bird species.

In recent years, when the weather has allowed, I’ve started the year with a circuit of Cardiff Bay, and that’s exactly how I began 2026. A bitterly cold wind was blowing out of the north west, which probably accounts for some missed birds – I think the resident Raven pair were probably huddled near their perch and the Linnets had found somewhere more sheltered to forage, but my total by the end of an eight-and-a-half-mile walk was a very respectable 43 species.

The highlights for me were, firstly, a Treecreeper (my first photo above) that I spotted on a street tree just a block from home – they can be quite difficult to find locally, but that was the second one I’d seen on local street trees in the past week.

Redshanks are one of my favourite bird species and, though I’ve seen several foraging for food on the mudflats outside Cardiff Bay Barrage this winter, the three birds that were stationed along the Ely River embankment on New Year’s Eve and again on New Year’s morning were the first I’d seen within the Bay itself. They tend only to come in during very cold weather.

Black redstarts have been absent from the Bay so far this winter, so local birders were very pleased when this female was located on 30 December, and very relieved that she decided to stay in to the new year. The same could be said of the Goldeneye pair that have been in the Bay on and off for a couple of weeks; fortunately for those of us birders who do love a list, they appeared together on New Year’s day. And so it began …