Today was my last full day in Scotland for a few weeks, but I had to wait in for various people to call, in attempts to fix the broadband (the reason why the blogs for the last few days have been late going online!) and the central heating. Tomorrow I will leave here early and try to make the most of the limited daylight hours to visit a few places on the journey back to Norfolk.
So I spent a little time contemplating this project so far, and my conclusion is that it’s been the best thing I could have done! I have spent far too much of far too many of the last few years sitting in front of a computer, and making the time to get out and watch wildlife almost every day has renewed my enthusiasm for natural history and has also made me more relaxed and more productive when I am working. Long may it continue!
It’s also been surprising in some ways: I didn’t expect to have seen 129 bird species as early as this in the year, nor to have added 4 species to my UK life list. It’s also been great to manage to see several mammals so far including roe deer and red squirrel. We’ll soon be entering the phase of the “race” where Brenda starts to add a lot of moths and flowers to her list. She won’t catch me for a good while, but the gap will start to close quite quickly I think!
I did remember to check the moth trap this morning…..and there were three moths! Two were chestnuts, which we had a few days ago, but one – after sending the photo to Brenda for identification – turned out to be a March moth (this one obviously doesn’t own a calendar!), a new one for the year.
New species for February 22nd:
Moths: March moth
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 129
Moths = 5
Wildflowers = 19