We are now in week 5 of the coronavirus lock down and my daily exercise is the first of Sammy’s walk of the day (He now is down to two, one with me and one with my wife, Sammy is very confused). As we are only allowed to do this one period of exercise I have now found myself doing the same route and back every morning, weather permitting, the thing is I have now found myself making note of everything I see on this route and actually find myself pushing myself to see something new.

In Birder’s terms I unknowingly have now created my own Birdwatching Patch, the whole concept is you regularly visit an area local to yourself throughout the year, ideally one that is not used as a regular bird watching area by lots of other Birdwatchers and you record what species you see in that area, some competitive people actually form a birders patch league and compete on the species of birds they list in their Patch, I guess they announce the winner at the end of the year, some even restrict the area of a Patch to be no larger than 3km. I am afraid I am not that competitive so I will just make a list of the species seen on this walk.

I actually started walking this route on April 9th, and the first bird I saw was a leucistic blackbird (partial loss of pigmentation), that is if I start listing from my front door when I left to my return home which is all part of my ‘patch walk’ route.

Also on this morning I managed to see Wren and Reed bunting, and started to hear my first Sedge warblers of the year then actually saw them later into the walk, this was also the morning of two Barn Owls hunting, as well as keeping a mental note of what I am seeing I also try to take photographs to record as well.

So already on my first day of this route I had added a new bird to my year list, the following day as well as seeing Sedge warblers and Barn Owl again I was able to add Whitethroat to my Year list and a new one for this Patch route, I have found in the last 12 days that I have been able to walk this route (one day was far too wet, so Sammy got a more urban walk), I have been able to add new species mostly birds to my year list and this Patch list.

Not only does the Landscape change with Spring advancing and more leaves unfolding on the trees and hedgerows but so the sounds and the light seems to change everyday. Highlights for me so far have been Whinchat, Grasshopper warbler, Common tern and today a male Cuckoo, at first a call then a flypast. My list so far on this Patch route is:

Birds:
Barn Owl
Blackbird
Blue tit
Buzzard
Canada goose
Carrion crow
Cetti’s warbler
Chaffinch
Chiffchaff
Common tern
Coot
Cormorant
Cuckoo
Dunnock
House martin
Kestrel
Kingfisher
Goldfinch
Grasshopper warbler
Great crested grebe
Great tit
Grey heron
Greylag goose
Jackdaw
Lapwing
Linnet
Mallard
Meadow pipit
Moorhen
Mute swan
Pheasant
Red kite
Red-legged partridge
Reed bunting
Reed warbler
Rook
Sedge warbler
Shoveler
Song thrush
Stock dove
Stonechat
Whinchat
Whitethroat
Wood pigeon
Wren
Mammals:
Muntjac deer
Roe deer

I will leave you with a couple more Landscape images