Happy New Year everyone. On the first day of the year we woke up to heavy rain, which was a bit disappointing to say the least.
I have made a couple of resolutions which may seem contradictory. Firstly I intend to be more dedicated to exploring random tracts of land within ten kilometres of the house. Usually I start off quite well but as soon as spring arrives I cannot resist regular visits to watery sites like Morton Bagot, Earlswood, and Mappleborough Green Flash. I'll keep up weekly visits to Morton Bagot this year, but other birding will be more random. We'll see whether I can keep that up through the summer.
My second plan is to be a bit more relaxed about birding just beyond my self-imposed 10 km circle, extending it to 20 k just for twitching birds I'm unlikely to see in the core area. I still have care-related time constraints so it'll probably be a case of tick and run.
In fact I spent the afternoon of New Year's Day attempting just that. I went to Upper Bittell Reservoir, where a Caspian Gull had been seen a few days earlier. Unfortunately this was a case of dip and run because it didn't appear to be there.
This morning I took myself off the Kemp's Green, an area of farmland between Umberslade and Ullenhall. The year list got a bit of a boost, but the species on offer were fairly modest. My best discoveries were a Golden Plover and a Yellowhammer, both of which were ticked audibly and not visually.
As it was sunny I was hoping to photograph something, but the only birds which came close enough were a small party of Long-tailed Tits.
Oh, one more thing. I've rejoined the world of social media by signing up to BlueSkySocial. My account currently has seven followers and no posts. Hopefully I'll eventually see something worth reporting.
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