Day Off

Woke up this morning with a head that felt like it was going to explode and kept blacking out from dizziness, so a day off school was in order. It wasn't until 12:00 that I could get out of bed without falling over so I thought I would do a couple of hours garden birding to pass the afternoon.

The local female Sparrowhawk was once again hunting around the fields and terrorising all the small birds. It always seems to be the female I see hunting in winter and the only times I see the male is when he is perched in the trees around the garden, which the female never does. I love learning all the little habits of the local birds which helps me to understand their behavior. There wasn't much else around today, a small flock of Fieldfare flew north in the distance but the main bulk of winter thrushes seem to have moved off now.

Since there weren't many birds around I cut short the watch and routed out one of my logbooks from last year in which I had wrote down a running total of species for the year on each day till the start of April when I forgot about it. Using the young birders yearlist thread on birdforum from last year I managed to complete the rest of the year on the computer and also entered this years totals so far. This should help me to see how I ma doing in the yearlist compared to last years, and today I am up 14 species from last year.