The Shortest Day....

....well alleluia I say to that.

Having gained a first record this month in not getting out birding for ten days and the motor going into hospital tomorrow - hopefully just for the day - my hopes remain high. But if its the shortest day today then we can at least leapfrog over the Christmas period and begin to think about the New Year. I myself look forward to the repeats of 2009 which started with finding 210 Lapwing on Newby Moor just over the border and into North Yorkshire on 24 February with obvious signs of the new breeding season so early in the year, these birds could  begin laying in mid-March which would have been just three week after the date I saw them. Three days later I found my first returning Stonechat at Fluke Hall and around three weeks after that my first Wheatears were found with three a Cockersands and another two on Glasson Marsh from Bodie Hill.

Wing stretching Lapwing thanks to Peter Guy. 

Well I wouldn't want to jump too far into the future but before the end of March - as in 2009 - I'd like to think I will have found my first Sand Martin, and two Little Ringed Plover just scrapped into the month by arriving on Conder Pool on the 31 March which coincidentally was the very same date as in 2008. Also on the last day of March I observed a Swallow over the canal basin at Glasson Dock, and three Small Tortoiseshell butterflies at Cockersands.

So with just this small selection of records from 2009 I look forward to seeing them again in 2010, and with the influx of summer visitors to look forward to beyond this things are already beginning to look brighter....hows that for positive thinking!