Missing Latvia

Well that's my 2023 write-ups done, only nine months out of date. I can't quite summon the enthusiasm to start on 2024 yet, so instead I am plotting 2025. This obviously requires a spreadsheet, the top part of which looks like this.

Those who know me well can spot the obvious problem I suspect. There is a discrepancy. I won't say eBird rules my life, that would be doing Mrs L a disservice, but.... The five that are missing  are Andorra, Monaco, Slovakia, Bahrain and Monaco. Until yesterday Malta and Qatar were missing as well, but I am a total pedant and I have retrieved an old hard drive and found photographs from both places that have birds in. Not photos of birds, but just a photo that happens to have a bird in it. So my Malta list is now an impressive three, with Blue Rock Thrush, Yellow-legged Gull, and Pigeon. Qatar is even better, a group of nine House Sparrows just about visible on a beach during a short layover.

The remaining five have nothing. Of these, Latvia is particulaly annoying as it was part of a birding trip, whereas the others were just non-birding visits, often on the way to other places. I think I had a few hours in Bahrain in 1999 or something, I recall wandering around between flights but no birds, and if I am honest I am not sure I should even count it, but I definitely had my feet on the soil even if it was in transit. But back to Latvia, here is my best photograph from my visit. I think you will spot the problem.

We drove through Latvia from Lithuania to get to Estonia in the middle of the night. On the way back to Lithuania from Estonia it was also the middle of the night. No birds were seen, although I do remember getting stopped by the Police because our headlights were stuck on full beam, and Bradders who was driving getting a good telling off, and possibly also a ticket which I think we just threw away. Anyway, the hot news is that I am going back to Latvia in late April. In daylight.