After a year of spending nearly every day together in 2008, Ruth has escaped down to Oxford to visit her mum. We owe a huge thank you to Ruth's mum as she came to the rescue of The Biggest Twitch back in August. We were in Peru, behind our hoped for total, a new player had just emerged on the world year list scene and most importantly we were broke!! Things were not looking at all good. It was without doubt the lowest point of 2008. Luckily Ruth's mum came good and baled us out and our new competitor finished 2008 barely over 3,000. So Alan is left in charge of the keyboard so excuse the spelling mistakes and bad grammar. But he can report good progress on the book, with no rare birds reported in North Wales today he managed a good long spell typing. Not so sure about tommorrow as his car is going in to the garage which is close to RSPB Conwy and the temptation to call in and see a few birds might be too much.