NEWS
MARTIN GARNER SPURN
YOUNGER BIRDER
COMPETITION 2019 By James King, Year 11
Earlier in the spring, I was excited to enter
the first round of the Martin Garner Spurn
Young Birder 2019 Competition by completing
an online questionnaire which included
fascinating questions about bird
identification, ornithological
knowledge/theory and general birding. Later
in July, I was selected as one of the three
entrants to compete in the 14-16 group finals.
After school on Friday 6th September, my parents and I
travelled to Hull in East Yorkshire to our accommodation,
all set for competition for the next morning! On
Saturday, by 9:10am we were pulling into the coastal car
park at “Sandy Beaches”, Spurn. A quick scan out to sea
found a distant Arctic Skua heading South offshore- a nice
start! Shortly after, it was time to head to the Observatory
for the 2019 Young Birder Finals!
By 9:30am, the 6 finalists with their parents and families for
both junior and senior categories were all gathered in the
Spurn Bird Observatory common room; everyone excited
and eager for the competition to begin. The friendly expert
assessors (Sarah Harris and Paul Stancliffe from the BTO;
Jonnie Fisk, Lizzie Bruce and Andy Hanby from the Spurn
Bird Observatory Trust) soon explained the running order
and plan for the competition ahead. Five disciplines would be
assessed by the judges over the morning: sea watching;
“Vismigging”; Estuarine Waders; birding the bushes-
passerine identification; and lastly a challenging “Lab Test”.
Each finalist would be taken around the Spurn Bird
Observatory Recording Area for an individual assessment
with the judges for 20 minutes field birding
(finding/explaining the ID of all the species present), as well
as answering questions on bird identification and general
ornithological knowledge/theory at each stage. Finalists
would score points for correctly answering questions and
correctly identifying all species present throughout the
morning across the assessments. The young birder in each
category who both scored the most points across the finals,
would win the 2019 Martin Garner Spurn Young Birder
Award! The three competitors in the final for the 14-16 years
old category were from Shropshire, London and Kent.
At 10 a.m the
competition began,
and first up for me
was the seawatching
assessment with
Lizzie Bruce, warden
of RSPB Titchwell
Marsh.
A fairly quiet watch off Sandy Beaches was enlivened by 1
Fulmar, 10 Sandwich Tern and 20 Gannet offshore.
However, the highlight here was watching Meadow Pipits
flying ‘in off’ the North Sea! The supplementary questions
asked were naming one identification feature separating
Velvet and Common Scoter in flight, describing the
comparative length/shape of the tails of adult Arctic, Long-
tailed, Pomarine Skuas, and naming two species of
Shearwater that have bred/held territory in the UK before. I
found the latter tricky, scoring half marks with Manx
Shearwater - I later discovered that Little Shearwater had
held territory on Skomer Island, Wales in 1982!