Covid continued with a vengeance into 2021 and from January to March the only birding we did was back garden birding which features the usual suspects. The only notable events were the appearance of a pair of Grey Wagtails that showed up on the 6th and became very attached to the meal worms I am now buying in 5 Kilo sacks!!. A Blackcap was in the garden on 17th February and we got really good views of a Mealy Redpoll that landed on our feeder just fifteen feet from where we were sitting.
I put up a new nestbox as the camera on our previous one broke and it was easier to replace the whole thing with a new one which I got at a reasonable price. The old cabling worked fine so that made the wholw switch-over a lot easier. Nothing had used it by the end of March but a couple of Blue Tits had expressed an interest. A House Sparrow is nesting under one of our roof tiles but it is too high up to see much except the adult/s coming and goind occasionally. All the birds got their spring clothes on and the singing lightened the mood in an otherwise Covid-darkened period of semi-imprisonment.
By the end of March we had both had our first Covid injections and our annual bird list for the first three months of 2021 had reached a mighty total of 17 ! We are hoping for more in April when we hope vaccinations will have allowed the government to open up a bit so we can travel again – at least a few miles to some of our favourite birding spots. It has been hard not birding for so long – but we survive!