Goodbye & good riddance 2020

What a crap year for everyone. 2020 started off well for us with a trip to Australia to see the grandchildren but even in early January there were rumours of a new Covid virus in China. I think, along with the whole World, we thought it would get contained over there. How wrong we were. Our first major pandemic since Spanish flu just after the 1st World War hit Europe hard. With the first lock down 'of a couple of weeks' in March morphing into a major shut down of the whole UK and subsequent periods of relative freedom followed by more lockdowns normal life has taken a major backseat. The cycle of lockdown and then periods of relative sanity was always going to happen until either we got a vaccine or the whole country had herd immunity. 

I consider myself lucky that we've escaped relatively unscathed with our immediate family still working and healthy. The fact we live in a rural area has meant that we've been able to get our prescribed daily exercise walking the lanes round the village which, coincidentally, is also my local birding patch. 

Spending more time local birding had meant that I've added 6 new species to the patch list. Grasshopper Warbler, Red-legged Partridge, Whimbrel, Ring-necked Parakeet, Golden Plover and Stonechat.  The partridges were seen twice approximately a mile apart unless there are two pairs. The Stonechat and Golden Plover were long overdue given our proximity to the Dee Estuary. The Whimbrel, Golden Plover & R N Parakeet also made it onto the garden list! In addition Tree Sparrow was also a garden tick. They used to be fairly common in this area with a breeding colony around 0.5 km away in a straight line but I haven't seen one in the area since we moved in 4 years ago.

An undoubted highlight of local birding was having a Barn Owl take up temporary residence in a tawny owl box in the garden whilst the long hot spring meant we could enjoy the garden and our garden nesting birds had a good head start - all except the Blackbirdds and Song Thrushes who's early nesting attempts failed as they couldn't find enough worms to successfully raise their young.

The lockdowns and travel restrictions put a major obstacle in the way of twitching nationally but during a break in various lockdowns we did manage to get to Shetland for a week in September and then a few days in October where I finally got to see Pallas's Grasshopper Warbler in the UK. (Photo copyright Jase Atkinson).

Another trip was managed to Stiffkey to see the UK's first record of Rufous Bushchat for 40 years and see one of those annoying splits, Stejgeners Stonechat.(Photo copyright Chris Griffin).

 

Covid restrictions meant the usual SCAN canon netting trips and trips to Puffin Island were cancelled and to cap it all a bird flu outbreak in Frodsham meant I had to stop ringing for a few weeks as we were within the 10 km surveillance zone - just as good numbers of winter thrushes descended on the garden to gobble up the berries I'd been nurturing all year! The Covid pandemic meant Hilbre was closed for a period of time so we missed the bulk of the spring migration until Wirral Borough Council relented and allowed a skeleton Obs team to operate under strict protocols.

To everyone out there - here's to a better 2021. Stay well and hopefully I'llsee a lot of you sometime soon.