As at the begining of the year the british list was 587 species ( going up by at least two this year i think!) but this list of british birds includes a lot of oddities including Great Auk which is now extinct which is also 1 of 9 species not recorded since 1949. Also such raraties as the only european sighting of Golden Winged Warbler in kent in 1989 which was suspected to be ship assisted here. So if this was ship assisted should it count as a wild bird and how differant is this to an escaped bird? Then you have the uk400 british list that includes sub species so birds like yellow wagtail can become grey headed, black headed, blue headed and so on.....
Its all very confusing
