2012 Crap Patch Peanut Challenge

I've always thought that entering the annual patch list thing on the LondonBirders wiki was a bit pointless unless you have consistently free weekends, flexible work hours, or the good fortune to work within a pre-work/lunch-time stroll of, say, a Royal Park, or one of the big western/northern reserviors. But what about those of us for whom lunchtime birding that actually involves birds is just a pleasant dream? Perhaps it's time to have a work patch competition with a slightly significantly lower bar.

So, in an effort to find out once and for all which is the crappest of the two - a question that has  no doubt regularly crossed the minds of many if not all birders - Mr Wanstead and I have embarked on a work patch list competition - the 2012 Crap Patch Peanut Challenge. His own patch of avian desert, Canary Wharf, against my little patch of avian desert, just south of Tower Bridge. Highest number of species seen wins, and the winner receives a packet of peanuts. Yes, the stakes are high, even if the patch totals won't be.

I have some distinct advantages:

1: Perhaps most advantagey, I spend five days a week in this office. He currently works from home, spending only one or two days a week in the office. This obviously translates into more patch-hours for me and is enough to make me feel less bitter about the fact that working from home, my really, really nice home with the river view, is just not an option. (That last bit might be a lie.)

2: I have "Knot House", "Raven Wharf" and a "Curlew Street" on my patch, all presumably named for the huge flocks of waders and corvids that use them. That should help.

3: While I'm the first to admit that I don't know a lot about the docklands (on my internal map there's a big gap around that way with "here be dragons and not many birds, don't go" written on it), I suspect my patch is marginally better than his. Mainly due to this:

Yes, I believe this is called "vegetation". It is something that sometimes happens where buildings aren't happening and I've heard that birds are fond of it. It is, by local standards, a fairly big piece of "vegetation" and this morning by taking a frankly ridiculous route I was able to walk right through it. For my efforts I was rewarded with a singing wren, which was at the time tick number 13. It's worth mentioning that since they've started building on half of Potter's Fields, the only and therefore best hedge on site has been removed. This, with the subsequent building work disturbance, has lead to far fewer birds in the area.

4: Mr Wanstead's all time total for Canary Wharf, over a number of years, is 35. My work patch total is 39, since April/May last year when we moved to this office. Admittedly a reasonable proportion of those were single sightings which are unlikely to happen again - jay, chiffchaff, swift, etc, but I think I have more "guaranteed" birds than him. However, his patch did once hold a blyth's reed warbler, and if he can find one of those, I'll let him count it as 5...

News on the twitter that Lethbridge had surged into the lead was quite a shock, and needed rectifying. Eleven great crested grebes?! Eleven! Such things are unheard of round this way. I'm just back in the office after giving the patch, such as it is, a good thrashing. We are now both on 16. Tomorrow I'm heading out with the express intention of finding a magpie - this is proper patching.

Honestly? I'm quietly confident of winning, which will be nice, if a little hollow given my advantages. But it should be fun anyway.

Perhaps, if he loses, he will be able to console himself with the fact that I actually don't really like peanuts that much. I enjoy opening them or feeding them to squirrels more than eating them.

Should maybe have mentioned that yesterday.