ASs some regulars may know I sometimes have a few health problems that at times restricts my access to the countryside so many of the restrictions that we have endured, and are still enduring, do not feel strange to Chris and myself. My immune system is pretty shot up at times so I'm quite good at avoiding numbers of people, I'm maybe not as anti social as it seems, and I've never been a lover of shopping unless its books. When we were recommended to shield in our own homes we actually realised we could walk the riverside fields with permission from the owners and had little chance of meeting anyone so we felt quite happy there. When restrictions eased we have four small nature reserves within a couple of miles of home with plenty of space to avoid close contact but still both watch birds and talk about birds with others doing the same, quite a little anti social bird club we are. There has been good birds aplenty and as winter has drawn closer the wintering Thrushes arrived we have been doing counts on them. One of our local reserves has got a wonderful Starling murmuration,60,000 birds at least, which we managed to social distance the grandsons to. We have found by visiting the busiest of the reserves late afternoon most birders have gone home and we enjoy the spectacle of birds going to roost. We do miss visiting our local moorland but they are outside the 3 mile radius we put on ourselves, they will still be there when all this is over and we settle down to our new normal. Because I am in that at risk category we seem to be swimming in hand sanitiser but Chris keeps an eye on what I get up to. I just hope other folk are coping as well as us and getting the support we have been getting, take care out there we will beat this lot somehow.
Pete
Birding is for everyone no matter how good or bad we are at it,enjoy it while you can
Our herring gulls are red listed birds. Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.
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Regards, Hazel
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Tony
My Flickr Photostream
That's good news Tony, they certainly are doing a great job at rolling out the doses. From Tuesday they are opening up the conference centre on our parkland so they can administer the vaccine; new centres are opening up all the time. I didn't have a choice of centre to go to as this invite came direct from my local doctors surgery but at the end of the day it doesn't matter where I go as long as I can get the jab - which is more than likely the Ox/AZ.
Great news, Hazel! J is having his on Thursday. Some time ago I think it was you who mentioned 2 invitations. I had two invitations, the first from our local surgery via text message, and then a few days later an actual paper letter from the NHS came in the post. This may be because someone decided they ought to make certain no one is left out, not necessarily incompetence! TJ, I wonder if one of the messages went to your cousin or spouse from their local surgery as my first invitation did, and the other was from some national NHS office rather than from the local surgery, even though those are also the NHS!
Kind regards, Ann
Best wishes
Hazel in Southwest France