2025 - it's a wrap

Well goodbye 2025, it's been a blast. So what happened? I guess a lot of time will have been spent at work but I tend not to focus on that; I am over my earlier naivety that this stage in my career might be easier. However....I also remember lots of fun trips and fun trips do not come for free. If I want one I have to do the other, there is no getting round it. Children at university is also distinctly not free. But oh the trips, there wasn't a single month I remained in Wanstead, even if at times I wanted to. Morocco in January, Texel in February for the Spectacled Eider, as well as Arizona and Nevada that I never actually wrote about as it was very much an emergency family trip. The Algarve and Jersey in March, the US Mid-Atlantic in May, Brazil in June, the cycle touring trip in July, Germany in August, and Latvia, Grenada & Trinidad in October. And then Thailand and Oregon in November, and wine-related trips to Italy in both November and December, none of which I have got to yet but which remain firmly in my future blogging plans. I'm exhausted even typing it out and I haven't even mentioned another five trips up to Fife, one of which was a seawatching extravaganza with Bridled Tern and Cory's Shearwater on the same day. I am actually not sure how I manage it, but equally it sustains me. Big thanks to my main travel buddy Mick who helps spur me on - we did five of these trips together. There was a period a few weeks ago where I had three weekends away in a row and which by the time the third one came around I had no desire to go on whatsoever. I enjoyed the weekend away a lot in the end, but the scheduling (which was entirely my own fault) was horrible. I look back now and am fine with it, but I do need to think things through a bit more. And of course all these trips require planning, something which I enjoy almost much as the actual trips themselves, but which takes a tremendous amount of time. It's lucky I don't have any other hobbies.....

Few places on this planet have the grandeur of the American west

Looking closer to home, for the first time in many years I did not add to my Wanstead patch list. I gave it somewhat of a good go, but didn't really try especially hard and as a result ended up a few species shy of where I might usually land. 112 is actually bang on my historical average, but I expect a bit better these days and no surprise that it's also my lowest year list since 2019. No Common Tern, no Woodcock, no Green Sandpiper, no Great Black-backed Gull, all generally annual. I also didn't think I had any UK ticks despite ample opportunity, but a Ross's Goose in Ayrshire has somehow added to the total. Maybe it was a good one? Anyway, I have totally and utterly lost interest in chasing rarities in the UK, give me Fife or Wanstead any day. The World? Well that's another thing altogether.

Morocco

For the second year in a row I saw 1000 birds - 750 of these were with Mick, a stat that was surprisingly easy to extract from eBird via a recreational spreadsheet. It was exactly 1000 this time as it happens, a Woodcock in Piedmont being the final one in early December - I don't expect to see anything else. In fact I barely expect to leave the house. Fingers crossed! Of these 260 were new, and so my somewhat puny world list has now surpassed 3000. Yay! Given how much I travel and how old I am this somehow seems lower than it should be, but equally I am not given to these three week guided trips to exotic locations that scoop up every single last species. I'll never be a Jon Hornbuckle, but what is certain is that I enjoy world birding almost more than anything else. It is that voyage of discovery element, and I find that works much better for me without being shown everything by guides. I mean I do some guided birding, the trip to Brazil for example, but largely I like to do everything by myself, I find it highly satisfying. As I get older maybe that will change, but for now let me do all the planning and logistics and see if I can work it out. 2026 is shaping up to be less intense as it stands, with several longer trips already booked with Mrs L that don't actually involve birds at all. Amazing! I'll undoubtedly add a few more shorter things in - I am big believer in quite how far you can go and how much you can see on really short trips.

The garden is looking great again this year

Did I mention I had other hobbies? I've done a ton of gardening and mainly kept things alive, and for a period over the spring and summer the garden looked great. It was such a nice summer weather-wise and we spent hours and hours outside, lots of al fresco meals made all the better by a distinct lack of wasps. I put a lot of effort in to my small tropical paradise and we reap the rewards. Is there anything better than a late evening meal in the garden after a long day of work, or that first glass of Rosé early on Sunday afternoon after a hard stint tidying things up? The garden looks terrible again now of course, but winter is not kind to my plants and so I just ignore it all until about April. Means I have more time to drink wine.

Wine: 560+ notes taken. That does not mean I have drunk 560 bottles of wine. Far from it (how far I don't know), but one mega-tasting session saw me write 120 notes. I still drink too much of course but that's on me. I have expanded my horizons a little and rather than being wholly infused with Burgundy there are now short periods devoted to Italy and South Africa. In fact I am drinking a South African Cinsault as I type this, made by a single-minded genius of a wine-maker called Lukas van Loggerenberg. It's called "Geronimo", is pretty fabulous, and is far better value than almost any French wine I can think of. Wine of the year? Well that was French of course. Yquem. It is peerless and I was lucky enough to taste two bottles, 2005 and 1975, neither of them mine. Good wine is for sharing, and I have many generous friends who feel the same way and who have enriched my life in London beyond measure. None are birders, I expect none even know that I write this but I rather like that I can have a number of different and parallel lives that hardly ever coincide other than here.

The perfect day. I guessed from the development of the Tetrapanax that this was in early May but in fact it was late April. It will be upon before you know it and I still have four bottle of the 2022 to go before I start on the 2023.

I was wondering about doing a month by month review of the year, choosing just one photo that summed up the month. I may yet do so, but in case I don't get around to it it just remains to say Happy New Year, keep visiting in the folorn hope I may have written something, and enjoy whatever it is that you're doing. My advice is to do things that make you happy, avoid things that make you unhappy, and ignore what anyone else thinks of any of it.