It's fair to say I've been neglecting this; indeed I've written nothing since I left Sanday in October. Partly this is because I've not been particularly in the mood (when I'm not on any sort of decent mental form I struggle to translate it into enthusiastic words), but also I've not really done much that I haven't been able to fit nicely into a tweet, often with a link to more details on Trektellen.
That's not to say there hasn't been decent birding, pretty much all of it on patch, plus a sneaky trip to Pennington when the American Wigeon showed up - 4 miles being about the absolute limit of my twitching these days.
Vismig on patch was pretty decent (albeit with a virtual absence of the likes of Siskin and Redpoll), including some nice Woodpigeon days
and also connecting in my own relatively small way with the massive country-wide Redwing movement on 19th October - 653 birds surpassing my previous patch best by 620!!.
And the Arctic spell in mid December providing me with some decent wader numbers, including a Green Sandpiper as the 159th and final addition to the 2022 patch yearlist, plus a bonus Cattle Egret
Despite the added incentive of the resurrection of the excellent Patchwork Challenge yearlisting in 2023 has been pretty subdued. The weather has been largely atrocious - often very wet, nearly always very windy, and quite frequently both. It's been like being back on Orkney again, except that here I know the limitations of my patch, and battling out in unhelpful weather isn't going to get me flocks of passage wildfowl and a realistic chance of something rare, or even too much that's common. So I've limped up to 73 species so far, largely on account of a nice day on 2nd January which allowed me to get out all day.
I have managed to do a couple of seawatches on the windiest of mostly dry days, but Barton isn't blessed with a nice dry shelter to hide in, just some beach huts to hide behind if the wind isn't due south. So, given that seawatching in Hampshire is more miss than hit at the best of times, there just isn't the incentive to brave wet conditions. That said, despite not having seen a large amount, rather as expected, I have already had a big bonus of a Manx Shearwater, only my second record on patch, and a bird I suspect may not have been seen from the county in January before.
And to have already found two Black Redstarts means 2023 is already a good year
Haven't really been able to make the most of any dry days either, for the same reason that I am delving back into the blog - in mid November I made the rather spur-of-the-moment (and in hindsight extremely financially imprudent) decision to book flights to Nairobi, where I'll be heading next Tuesday! 22 days in Africa, mostly remaining in Kenya, but also straying for a few days across the border into Uganda. This has meant that pretty much any dry weather has had to be used for getting on top of work, and attempting to not let the bank account completely implode.
It's fair to say I'm getting pretty excited, as long as I don't think about the finances and try not to get too down about the carbon footprint (which is more of a struggle than ever). Having had the good fortune of visiting Kenya twice before (plus two South Africa trips, and a 10 week visit to Cameroon in 1992 that literally nearly killed me) I have the luxury of not having too many lifers to chase (although if anyone has a Grey-crested Helmetshrike recording they'd be willing to share I'd be grateful!), and so I'll be able to relax a little: for starters all except the last week will be done by public transport, and mostly camping. It'll be my first tropical birding trip since January 2019, so I just want to get on and enjoy it. In spite of all of that, I am indulging in a RAV4 for the last week so I can enjoy some big game. It wasn't in the original plan, but somehow it seems wrong to go there and not see elephants and giraffes!
And also I hope to blog about it, as far as energy levels (because even a relaxed trip is likely to involve dawn-to-dusk birding) and access to wifi will allow.
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