and before you know it 3/4 of the year has gone.
It would appear my last entry was January, it would be easy to assume that not much has happened since.
Looking back to this time last year when I just had the luxury of a decent birding autumn in the UK, with two short stays at Portland and the best part of a week at Spurn. I then started a work project, initially for 3 months then a further 6 months and then extended to the end of December this year, it became rather all consuming. Throw in a global pandemic and the country various states of lock-down since March and birding has rather taken an unavoidable back seat, with all Spring birding restricted to very local.
I can now start to surface again as thankfully I have just started winding down on the work front although heading into rather than out of winter is less attractive. My camera has almost remained untouched so I'm looking forward to a period of re-acquainting myself with how to use it !
There have been some highlights, locally in spring I managed a decent bird list on-foot from the house with lots of local highlights being Honey Buzzard, Goshawk, Hobbies, Turtle Dove, Redstart, Nightjar, Woodcock, Woodlarks, Tree Pipits, Nightingale, Dartford Warblers, Hawfinch, Crossbills, Firecrest.
Moving into autumn the usual gathering of Spotted Flycatchers on Blackdown and my first local Osprey over the house on 10 September.
The one advantage gained from working at home was an new experience with moths. Sal had bought me a moth-trap for xmas and it has been the gift that keeps on giving. Since I started using it in March I have seen 275 species at home., incredible that all these species would have gone largely unnoticed.
A limited picture selection of pictures below
 |
| A Blackdown Spotted Flycatcher |
 |
| Turtle Dove at home |
 |
| A local Wheatear |
 |
| Autumn mornings on Blackdown can be thick fog, this Stonechat was probably all I saw. |
 |
| Add caption |
 |
| Crossbill flocks were up to 40+ birds |
No comments:
Post a Comment