Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Month 1. Done.

Last year I was going all out to do a patch year list with my Blog Pal, Steve Gale at ND&B and in doing so had some great birds and broke my own patch year record which can't be bad. January 2019 ended on 89 species including such local megas a Red necked Grebe and Firecrest.

Fast forward to 2020, a new decade. I have not been hammering things as much due to less work days off ( I had extra last year due to a holiday reshuffle) and pretty crap weather at weekends. So, I ended January on 76 species. Not too bad I suppose with only one bird that I didn't see last January. The best was the long staying Water Rail in the wet wood, 2 Kingfishers on the pond, several Barn Owls and a single Chiffchaff on one day only.

What this means really is that I have several common species I should have seen by now, waiting until a quiet February day to boost the total... I bet Ringed and Grey Plover don't play by the rules...

The first quarter of any year here is much quieter than the final quarter so I am sure things will balance out by November...

An old pic of a Water Rail, it was too dark in the wood to get one this year but the current bird is fem/fw like this one...



2 comments:

Steve Gale said...

2020 cannot be as kind to you as 2019 was Stewart... or can it?

Stewart said...

No I wouldn't have thought so Steve, but no doubt there will be something of interest locally...