A few year ticks

Visited the troubled Beddington Farmlands yesterday, good to meet up with Zach and Co and also did a bit more exploring around Cuttlebrook too, back here in Oxfordshire from the new rental. Not much to sing and dance about- haven't bumped into any Waxwings yet during this irruption and can't bring myself to twitch them as takes the fun out of the possibility of finding some (I've found them in the past on several occasions while out working). There was a small flock in Thame a few days ago so got a relatively good chance if I can find the time to get out. 

Ebird list from the farmlands HERE. Highlights included a Dunlin, Firecrest and nice to see 30+ Lapwings still holding in there.

There's a possibility of a big freeze next week so will keep an eye on things as could be worth taking some time off work if it gets intense enough. 

Luckily I've managed to kill off the low level despair of UK inland local birding by booking some trips this year including a winter trip to Madeira in a few weeks, back to the Bulgaria project, a trip to Az and top of the bill a family trip to Australia in the summer. Will need to buy more land and push on fast with our net gain restoration works to balance the carbon accounts for this year. We've got quite a few wildlife gardening jobs booked in for this winter at Little Oak too which all helps. Now we are out of the Old Vic and into a small energy efficient home that helps too and also doubled down on buying shares in natural capital stocks (despite the risk of them falling further). We've also reignited the Beddington Farmlands campaign ahead of the planning re-application this year which is one of the biggest gains we can contribute too. An interesting update on the State of UK Nature markets HERE which basically concludes there is still not enough convergence to allow any organisation to accurately deal with net zero and net gain objectives which doesn't help the Green transition at any scale. However these new systems are slowly evolving further. 

Thanks the gods we no longer have a dog (Izzy went with Holly's brother after we moved out, she will be missed in other ways) and I can bait the garden for Red Kites. Still building up their confidence so hopefully better photos to follow. 

The Beddington Firecrest- still a scarce bird there and this particular one wasn't that easy to photograph

Common Snipe at Beddington

Common Nuthatch in Beddington Park- year tick 

Northern Herring Gull at Beddington - certainly miss the huge gulls numbers that used to feature during the winter at Beddington

More local floods in Oxfordshire- this one near the Esso garage in Thame. Didn't have too much different along this stretch of the Thame flood plain. Ebird list HERE. Highlights were are few waterfowl, good numbers of winter thrushes and the first Common Buzzards I've seen on the new local patch (which is scattered across various ebird hotspots and locations so a bit of a mess).