Social Isolation.

As many of you who know me are aware, I have been mainly socially isolated for the last 30 years ! Or at least trying to be. Now just this week it has become a national pastime.

Currently, I am lucky not to be exhibiting the symptoms of COVID-19 and I certainly hope it stays that way, but who knows what fate has in store?

From tomorrow I will be working from home. Genuinely. Not just saying I am then going out on a jolly. What this means in real terms is that I will be saving 1.5 hours travelling time and thus more daylight hours will be available to tidy the garden for spring. I don't intend to go anywhere, open, rural or otherwise unless its necessary, ie for shopping.

I had intended to make the most of my self imposed confinement by watching for wildlife in or from my garden. This will involve birding with skywatching offering the best chance of something interesting, moth trapping and seeing what turns up as I prune, thin and weed some areas. By coincidence I see today that Steve Gale and Dylan Wrathall   have had a similar idea excpet they have rounded up a few others to join them and just like the virus, I have sneaked up and invited myself to the party! It has been named by Italian birders - BWKM0 or Birdwatch at zero kilometres.  Anything we can do to take our minds off this awful state of affairs in this country at the minute must be a good thing.

So, watch this space and be dazzled by the delights about to be bestowed!

Some garden spuggies on our feeders...

A common Hebrew Character, the most abundant moth of spring in my garden. A stunner....

Dystopia.

Remember when all we had to worry about was the weather in February? Back then storms were the weekend accompaniment. Dark nights pressed on and winds buffeted us around our local patch. Birds were few and far between.

Now here we are in the middle of March and things have gone from bad to worse. Much worse.

The weather is still none too clever with westerly strong winds just about every few days ( usually weekends) but now the surreal is upon us. The Corona Virus or Covid-19 seems all set to bring ruin and despondency to us all. Every single bit of news media is hell bent on telling us that we are about to die, if not by the virus, by starvation or lack of medical assistance for other ailments. The boundaries change daily with Bojo looking like he is in the worst throes of it as he announces science corrections and U turns at every corner. 

On the BBC tonight, madness prevailed. News bulletin after news bulletin told us in detail how many people will die ( up to 20,000 all being well but up to 250,000 in a worse case scenario) and how the whole economy will go to shit leaving us languishing in a Mad Max style vision of the future, then Holby City was cancelled because it was making us depressed! You couldn't make this up!

As you can see, the whole thing has me thoroughly miserable.

Hopefully this bloody awful spell will be over soon... one way or another.

At least the 300+ Frogs in a small moorland pond last weekend seemed happy enough...