Getting busier

I assume anyone that lives in London cannot have failed to notice that it is getting a lot busier. I've been going out on Wanstead Flats from time to time, probably about once or twice a week. My last visit was exactly a week ago, and I was forced home by 7.30am due to an ever increasing number of people making me uncomfortable. It struck me as I attempted to cross the main road on my way home that I was having to wait for traffic to pass. Two weeks ago I can't say that would have been a problem, I would have waltzed straight across. 

Then on Tuesday I used the car for the first time in over six weeks - the last time it had gone anywhere was March 20th! I felt that if I left it any longer it might not start, and having to call someone out or get close to a neighbour to jump it is not ideal at the moment. Luckily it did start but I had to inflate all four tyres significantly to make it safe before I took it out on a quick spin on the North Circular. This was extremely early in the morning, before 6am, but I was amazed at the number of cars on the road, especially on my way back home at around twenty past. I get the feeling that Londoners are done with lockdown, and that gradually people have been going out more and more. As I rarely go out at all, to me it seems quite sudden and vastly different from earlier on in lockdown.

Common Whitethroat on Wanstead Flats

30,000 people have died so far, a sobering thought. If as seems likely the UK begins to ease restrictions on movements this weekend, as many other countries have been doing, I personally have no desire to get back out and about and perhaps add to that grim statistic. So many people have been taking the piss already, treating these past weeks as an extended holiday, imagine what it will be like when we get the nod from the Government? I feel like I have a good idea what it will be like, especially on a sunny weekend, and I want to avoid it at all costs. So I'll stay in lockdown a little longer if you don't mind as Wanstead Flats will almost certainly become a no go area whenever the weather is fine. It is bad enough now with all the picnicking, sport and sunbathing - an extension of what people can legitimately do will be the final straw. Imagine living on the coast?

Which means continued birding at home, and as May progresses we will slip into a dire state of affairs where there are no birds moving. Lockdown listing has been genuinely fun but June comes early these days.... When skywatching and nocmigging no longer deliver the goods then what will birders do? I'll be OK as I have lots of other interests, others are not so fortunate. And when lockdown #2 comes into place in about a month from now when cases and daily deaths begin to increase again.....

I am probably most concerned at this point about going back to work. Public transport, especially the tube, has zero chance of maintaining social distancing. The commuting mentality is not one that listens to reason or that provokes thoughts of how one might help out one's fellow man. It is every man for himself, a scrum of stress, objection and aggression, and I can only imagine the contempt with which many will treat any official attempt to enforce any kind of distancing rules. In fact the commute may be the area which causes me to be stuck at home for much of the rest of this year and perhaps beyond - there is no way it can return to normal until a vaccine is out, and that probably goes for any form of transport. And as that is a long way out, any selfish desire I may have about resuming travelling is probably a pipe dream for the whole of 2020. At least I have a lot to look back upon I suppose. And any readers who check in regularly will not have failed to notice that this is exactly what is happening. With my recent blogging change of heart due to the circumstances (or perhaps I just needed the time?), it was annoying me that my trip reports were not up to date. I charged through California last week but then I realised I had missed out Florida a few months earlier. That is all to come and I won't lie, the stats indicate that far fewer people read the travel posts. That's a shame as I put a lot into them, but I can perfectly understand why that might be. But you know that won't stop me...

Short-billed Dowitcher