I'm very behind on the blog, due largely to the arrival of our amazing son Luca at the back end of January - life as you can imagine, is considerably different!
For this reason, my birding will be very much a local affair for the foreseeable - although to be honest, not much different from the last couple of years to be honest!
To entice me to stay as local as possible (barring anything juicy in Northants or Oxon), I decided to set myself an achievable challenge of seeing as many species as possible within a 12 mile radius of home, with a vague target of 130 species. It was also a fairly green way to approach my birding, which is no bad thing right?
Why 12 miles? Well basically just to include both Boddington Res and Bicester Wetlands - nothing more elaborate than that! This would hopefully give me a few more options for Wildfowl, Waders, Gulls & Terns all going well.
Before Luca arrived, in the first half of January, I bagged a handful of potential banana skins including Crossbill, Tree Sparrow and Med Gull, plus scarcities such as Brambling, Woodcock and Stonechat. A steady, if relatively low key start!
