Announcing the Black Scoter Prize for the Gankiest Full Fat Patch Tick!

 Yes indeedy, here is the inaugural competition for the gankiest full fat patch tick complete with an amayzing new trophy, courtesy of Royzah - herewith....

A black scoter, yesterday

We're going to be awarding the Scoter to one lucky winner shortly for the best gankiest full fat patch tick seen in 2021. The current front runner appears to be Little Grebe claimed by Bushveld on his crummy north-east Scotland patch but we just need to check that no-one else has anything worse....

Not many swallows about

There's been very little of note happening on patch recently. While the 19-CORVID lockdown means IN THEORY there's more time dossing about and plenty of opportunity to thrash the 2km radius around the house, Sybil is similarly restricted, so there's an inevitable list of  "The Jobs" to get through.

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week, for example, putting up a new greenhouse and building some rustic shelves out of old palletes to hold trays of seedlings.

I don't have any bird pictures to share, so here's the greenhouse
FFS! #DIWhy

Couple that with a limited level of enthusiasm for traipsing around patch for hours seeing fuck all and there's not much to report. Still, Seppy has been bleating on about updating the blog, so here you go.

Despite things being as pedestrian as expected, the arrival of the first swallows and sand martins, blackcap, chiff, willow warbler, an early sedgie, finally nailing dipper for the year and a few "undeclared" bits and bobs nudges the tally up to 78.88%.

That's me (temporarily) back on the podium then. Happy days!

banging them in

A quick stumble about on Galley this am produced ringed plover, sandwich tern, and common scoter for the year - not a bad hours work!

ganky gank gank

A gank-fest this weekend, well black redstart was all right, but fulmar, kestrel and lapwing were all Class A Gank. Still, leaves me with better stuff to get at a later date. Or maybe not.