Weekend Targets

The weekend is upon us. Praise be. It was a tough week here in Wanstead. Well, in Canary Wharf more specifically. But it is over and the next two days are mine. Birds are required. I thought about going somewhere different but there is a lot to do here in Wanstead, a lot to try and eke out.

Blackbird fell this morning on Wanstead Flats. The Central Line has been suffering from a lack of trains, the one thing that you might hope that it had lots of. Rather than spend half an hour on Leytonstone platform each morning I've been walking across Wanstead Flats and getting on the Elizabeth Line which has the required number of trains to able to take people to work. Most mornings it has been deathly quiet, no life in the frigid landscape, but today there was a bit of a flurry with Blackbird, Jay and Stonechat falling quite quickly. This puts me on 54 for the year. I had thought it was 53, but I had of course forgotten Cormorant, much as I do every year. This means that there are a lot of targets. Do have a spreadsheet? Of course I do.....

I hope to find at least some of these tomorrow. My January average is 64, so ideally I'd like to see slightly over half of these before the month is out but let's see. It will be nice to spend a little bit more time out there rather than have to yomp rapidly across, but I fear the mostly frozen water bodies will have seen off a fair few of these targets. They will be back I'm sure. Maybe 60 is a nice number to aim at, and a bit more realistic. I'll be in touch.