Ever wondered about taking up patch birding or even Patchwork Challenge?
Patchwork Challenge is a fun birding competition, focused on engaging and understanding your local birding patch, to see how many species of bird you can see on your patch year on year. It works by participants watching a patch which is a 3km2 area (or 10km radius from home which is a relatively new part of the competition) and seeing how many species you can see in a calendar year, and these are then compared year on year as a comparative score.
Each species equates to a certain amount of points, with one point for a ‘common’ species and five points for a ‘mega’. There is a very strong emphasis on finding your own birds, which is one of the aims of the competition, with bonus points scored for finding scarce and rare birds. If you find a scarce species, points for that species are doubled, for example Radde’s Warbler will be worth 3 points if you twitch it, but 6 if you find it yourself. If you find a rare or mega, points are tripled, for example Eastern Subalpine Warbler would be 4 points if you twitch it, but 12 if you find it.
For Scotland, there are three main mini-leagues to participate in: Inland Scotland, Coastal Scotland and Islands. Currently we only have a few patches for the Inland Scotland mini-league and would love to spruce up the competition for this league. The criteria for whether a patch would be classed as Coastal or Inland is that your patch has to be 5km from the sea to be an Inland patch. We also have an Estuarine mini-league, which includes the whole of Britain but unfortunately we currently have no Scottish patches in this league.
Brown Shrike © David Roche
Patch birding is full of exciting birding moments; it really makes you appreciate the more common species that you might overlook when birding elsewhere and, by doing so, helps better both your knowledge and the chances of finding something a little out of the ordinary.
Birding locally is also eco-friendly and carbon-conscious, at a time when it has never been more important. We also keep a green mini-league for those that participate by only using public transport, cycling or walking.
It is a fantastic way to grow local friendships and rivalries with competitors nearby to you, and we also have an under 25s league to try and help connect young birders across Britain.
One of the biggest bonuses to taking part is the possibility of contributing to conservation. This is done when visiting your local patch, taking detailed notes of the birds present and submitting them through either BirdTrack or eBird. This ensures that they make it to the local county recorder and into a national and even international database. Taking detailed notes of the birds and the weather at your patch also helps you as a birder, by gaining a better understanding of your area and the birds that use it throughout the year.
During 2025, the 28 Scottish patches (a mixture of 3km2 and 10km radius patches, with some participants holding multiple, which is superb) have had some brilliant records with far too many to list all the goodies on here! They include Lesser Scaup, Baird’s Sandpipers, Hume’s Warbler, Northern Treecreeper, Red-flanked Bluetail, Brown Shrike and Franklin’s Gull, all recorded on patches in Scotland during the last few months.
Baird's Sandpiper © David Roche
We hope that this has sparked your interest in patch birding and in taking part in next year's competition! For more information about Patchwork Challenge, follow this link: https://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.com/ and keep us updated with what is on your patch by using the hashtags #PatchBirding on either Bluesky or Twitter (X). We look forward to seeing what you find on your local patches in the next competition, starting 1st January 2026!
Best of luck with your birding.
Patchwork Challenge Team
