Saturday, December 06, 2014

Dull.

There has been a bit of a blog blockage on here lately. There are a few reason for this, no time during the week  (I never see daylight at home!), Christmas shopping, visits etc and most days even at weekends are scarcely light enough to see much ( dull Red Squirrel, left, illustrates the point).

Mainly though, it is a lack of motivation at this time, we always seem to be busy!

If we get a spell of snowy, cold, sunny weather between now and Christmas I might just awake from my pseudo hibernation.

I am planning what to do in 2015 now. So far I think there might be a notebook resurgence and I'll try and give myself a right shake up on the patch birding front. We'll see.

Anyway, don't fear, I haven't jacked it all in, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

5 comments:

Steve Gale said...

Hi Stewart - I'm local patching next year. Why don't we predict a bird target (based on honesty!) and then see who gets the highest percentage increase on that target? Winner takes nowt but a bit of smugness...

Stewart said...

Hi Steve, Yes ok I'm up for that. You can see my patch on the map in the side bar. My totals for the last 5 years are 2009 - 147, 2010 - 162, 2011 - 154, 2012 - 152, 2013 - 134 and 2014 - 127.

That is an average of - 146 sp over the period.

John said...

Ok one may scoff at this..... But what is 'patching'?

Steve Gale said...

OK then - your base-line figure is 146 and mine is 110. That might sound low, but apart from a couple of village ponds have no water bodies at all...

Stewart said...

John - Patching is the term we use for local patch bird watching. A local patch is somewhere close to home that we do most of our day to day birding. It might be a local reservoir or ponds, bit of coast or parkland anywhere with a mix of habitat that is clearly defined by boundary, not too big ( no more than 4 sq km say). You get to learn what is regular and what is scarce here. A common bird in some places might be a rarity on your patch. Its all relative.

Steve - Great, deal done.