New Year resolutions
IT IS something of a tradition to make resolutions – if only to oneself – at New Year, so here are a few suggestions. An obvious one is to try to do something about the health of the planet: an absolute refusal to take a plastic bag from the supermarket is a practice I have personally observed for a couple of years (though half the things you buy are already wrapped in plastic anyway, and markets are worse offenders than the big chain stores)
It would be nice if we all could afford an electric car, of course, though the price of electricity hardly encourages this, and a certain lack of places in which to plug in your lead is also apparent.
So, I start to look at selfish resolutions that could be on offer. Worldwide travel has been dealt a savage blow by Covid, so no trips to Costa Rica etc. Therefore, thoughts turn to what remains to be seen in Spain.
Firstly, mammals: Although I have had the good fortune to see a lynx on one of my several excursions to Andújar, I couldn’t match that with my one real effort to see wolves – four days of frustration that need to be improved on. And as to the brown bear – I’ve never even tried to get a glimpse of those, so a visit to Asturias seems indicated.
On the way to rectify these omissions, I could perhaps add rook to my Spanish list – there is an isolated colony breeding near Leon. On the subject of birds, a breeding bird I should very much like to see is the middle spotted woodpecker, for which a trip to Cantabria should suffice. That would be a ‘lifer’ as would Tengmalm’s owl, which would certainly take a bit of finding (being largely nocturnal).
Another bird that takes a bit of finding is the capercaillie, almost extinct in Cantabria and Asturias, but a little more numerous in the Pyrenees. Although I have seen them long ago in Scotland, that too would be a Spanish ‘tick.’ Then there are always the smallest of the crakes, little, and Baillon’s, neither of which has crossed my path.
Of course, the beauty of birding is that you can have no idea what the next good find will be – it will almost certainly be quite unexpected.