Local Lockdown Bucket List

With an end to restricted travel getting closer every day, I'm sure everyone reading this is keen to get out and spread their birding wings. I know I certainly I am. But to avoid you wishing away these next few weeks or months, my post this week is going to be a series of 'Low Carbon Birding Challenges', to make the most of our local birding scene before we can all travel further afield, and before some of us forget about the spots that we've grown to love over the last year. A Lockdown Birding Bucket List Top 10 if you will. 

Hopefully, it might help us to rekindle our love for our local area, a love which might have worn quite thin over the last few months of being forced to visit it exclusively every day! I hope this highlights a few positives that we can take away from this past year of enforced local lockdown birding, and maybe some that we can continue to enjoy after lockdown and beyond. If there are any you haven't done already, there's still time to give them a go:

1. If you haven't already, start a patch list! There really is no better way to get to know what's common in your area and motivate you to get out walking each day.

2. Find a territory of a declining bird. Just think how many undiscovered breeding Willow Tits or Lesser-spotted Woodpecker territories there might be out there that haven't been found. This is a great time of year to find one and these widespread but declining birds could potentially be found just about anywhere in the country. It would be a huge win for their conservation if you found a new site.

3. Try and beat your Lockdown 1.0 garden list. We're almost at the one-year anniversary of the first lockdown (I know that's not something to be celebrating!) but I for one remember how much time I spent and how much enjoyment I got from garden listing the first time around. Sure, that excitement has dwindled, but maybe a bit of healthy competition with yourself (at exactly the same time of year, to make it fair) might be the thing you need to get it back. See if your vismig skills have improved since this time last year! 

It might seem odd, but I've particularly enjoyed my garden being a part of my 'patch' this past year. In the past, my patch was a specific site several miles away from home that I birded during designated visits. With my regular patch now having to be replaced with places walking distance from home, I have loved the fact that I am able to go 'patch birding' at any moment, with simply looking out of the bedroom window presenting an opportunity to add to my patch list. It has really added to my 'anything is possible' mentality in birding. 

4. Find an undiscovered birding spot near home. In a few weeks' time, sadly many of us will probably stop birding the immediate area around our homes. We probably all feel by now we've exhausted pretty much all there is to offer within walking distance of our house. But what if you found a newly flooded field that goes on to attract some great waders this spring? A hidden stream that's not on your OS map, that happens to have a Kingfisher? A local farm which hosts a large gull flock? If you haven't found a hidden gem at some point in the last year then the chances are you're not looking hard enough. If however, and there will be a lot of you out there, you really have covered every inch of your 5km square then hopefully you've found somewhere local that'll be worth revisiting, even when lockdown is over. 

5. Contribute to citizen science. Something I've noticed in the last year since Covid, is the huge uptake in online bird recording, especially BirdTrack and eBird. If you haven't joined in yet, then now is a great time to do so. All records go towards helping to monitor and conserve bird populations, and recording your visits round your local area will be a great way to map what is probably a very under-recorded area. If you've got a lot of time on your hands then many birders have undergone the lengthy task of migrating all of their records to these sites, but you'll need a lot of patience!

6. Join the online birding community. Something I've really enjoyed over the last year, which is not something I'd ever previously done, is getting involved with the online birding community on Twitter. This can be a great way to share wildlife experiences and live vicariously through others when we might not be able to see the birds they're seeing ourselves. I've got to know some great birders since last March, and I don't think I would have done otherwise.

7. Invest in a camera. It seems to be more and more important these days for a rarity record to have a photo as proof. At the start of the lockdown, I got myself a Nikon Coolpix P900 and I couldn't be more pleased with my purchase. I'm by no means a photographer, rather a 'birder with a camera' - the P900 is perfect for this purpose. Likewise, lockdown is perfect to practise your photography on a local Meadow Pipit so that you can successfully get photographic evidence of that Red-throated Pipit flying overhead in Shetland, in the not too distant future. The good thing is that local birds will likely pose just as difficult photography subjects as a rarity, so you can practise your photography now, so that you're ready for the end of lockdown and the rarity-filled days ahead!

8. Work on your garden. The days are getting longer and warmer, so there's no better time to make your garden or outside space better for wildlife. Put up nest boxes, purchase a new feeder or maybe finally put in that pond you've always dreamt of. There are tons of ways you can welcome more wildlife to your garden and plenty of inspiration online. There couldn't be a better time to do it either, while we're all confined to our homes, and it'll give you even more reason to spend time out in the fresh air.

9. Nocmig/Live Nocmig. I've mentioned it before, but if you haven't tried it already then now is the time, with spring migration now finally underway. Sitting outside in the dark in the silence wrapped up warm with a hot drink (except for the occasional sound of an overhead migrant) is a really peaceful experience! Even better, we are coming to a really good time of year for nocmig - the idea of adding Water Rail and Common Scoter to your suburban garden list might seem unlikely but it really is possible right now! Who knows, you might hear something even more exciting - birders recorded Ortolan Bunting, Night Heron, Stone Curlew and much more over suburban UK gardens last year, though getting them live is another story...

10. Find a local rarity. Sure, you probably won't find a national rarity in the next few weeks, but the number 1 rule of local birding is IT'S ALL RELATIVE. Take my local area, for example, somehow (despite seeing them literally everywhere else) Little Egrets are still an exciting sighting for me close to home. One over the garden would be a mega, and when I saw one at Calke a few weeks ago it was somehow my first within 5 miles of my house! Shelduck are the same. The more you bird, the more you will come to learn the local birding landscape and the more you will be able to enjoy your own equivalent of my Little Egrets and Shelducks that are your very own patch gold. I've found lockdown a great opportunity to do this.

BONUS Tip: Never lose the optimism. Okay, now forget what I said above about not finding a national rarity - anything is possible! It's what makes birding so exciting. Already this year we've had a Northern Mockingbird in Exmouth and a possible Lammergeier in Norfolk (though I don't know what came of that!) so truly anything is possible. In the last few days we've had rare gulls in the form of a Laughing Gull in Dorset and an American Herring Gull in Cornwall. Whether you love them or you hate them, the indisputably great thing about gulls is that they really can and do turn up anywhere. Searching through an inland gull flock arguably carries so much more potential than, say, a tit flock in the same location. But maybe I'll save the gull talk for another post... 

For now, try and make the most of these last few weeks of enforced local birding, and hopefully we can all continue to enjoy occasional low-carbon birding even after all the restrictions have been lifted.