Wild at Hull 2020

I don't usually do year summaries, but this has been a year we'll find hard to forget. It has been an awful year in so many fronts for most people, staying away from family, and students, working from home with endless online meetings. I feel lucky it hasn't hit me that hard, our family getting out lightly so far, and this week, when I went through my 2020 photos I noticed that I've managed to fill quite a lot of nature-related activities in the year. Also, how far away January and February 2020 feel from now, it was odd to realise that trips that I thought were a couple of years back were actually in these early, pre-covid months, like the Waxwings in Hessle on the 10th of March. Then, I was planning so many things that ended up being cancelled: conferences, holidays, field trips... 

My first trip that I associate to Covid was on the 3rd of March, when I got the train to Filey. It was one of my year resolutions to use public transport more, and I had planned my Migrants Way walk to use buses to avoid walking back the same way, and to make stages longer. During this Filey trip, it was me and another guy on the carriage, well distanced anyway. It was when the news were talking on outbreaks in the Canary Islands. This guy was speaking on his mobile, quite loudly, saying he has just got out of Tenerife, and he also kept coughing. It felt all too real. 

I started the Migrants Way, though, and Gabrielle Jarvis had asked to walk with me. We did Spurn, and Easington together, but then sharing a car or taking public transport became risky and I carried on on my own to Holmpton. Then came lockdown.

An Osprey migrating up the River Hull was one of the highlights of 'Lockdown Birds' walks.

Lockdown birds

April and most of May were spent in lockdown. I felt very lucky we were allowed to leave the house for exercise, unlike my Spanish family, which were recluses of their flats. Being able to be outdoors helped me keep my sanity in these mad times. I did a daily walk around home, exploring parts of Hull I had never visited, completing bird lists along the way on each km2 as part of the allowed exercise walk. No binoculars, just my camera, which I used sparingly. It was more fun that I had anticipated. The city was deserted, it was the bird breeding season and I lockdown forced me to do just urban birding, which is something I like anyway. The fantastic spring weather also meant that the garden was buzzing with insects. I shared as much as I could on social media, trying to keep my spirits up though the hard times. During the second lockdown, in November, I repeated the same walks and added some more nice birds to this year Hull list.

A view of Filey from Buckton Cliffs.

Migrants Way continue

Then we got out of lockdown the last week of May. Was it too late to continue as I had missed two whole months of peak migration? I decided that carrying on made sense, it would keep me busy researching the stages, poring over maps, reading about the geography, palaeontology and natural history of Holderness. I'm so glad I did, this has been my favourite walk so far, also most of the walks were well socially distanced, so that was an opportunity to escape from covid once a week.

Ruddy Darters mating by one of the ponds at Hollym Carrs during our Hull Nats meeting.

Hull Nats

A hard year for Hull Nats. We managed two monthly field trips at Hull Natural History Society, in January to Hornsea and on February to North Cave Wetlands, and we even had our AGM on the 10th of March, but then we cancelled events during lockdown 1 and then lockdown 2, with summer trips being socially distanced, including a very interesting one to Hollym Carrs. The website was more active as members shared their findings. Looking forward to a more active group next year.

Mating Willow Emeralds

Hull Dragons

We also decided not to cancel Hull Dragons. We would encourage people to submit garden records, and most of the sites we did were either walkable or we could do it as part of short, allowed trips. Indeed, Hull Dragons 2020 was even more successful than 2019, we got many more records and the same number of species, adding breeding evidence for Willow emerald and Hairy Dragonfly at Hull. I published all monthly summaries from May to September at Bugblog.

Swans of the World

Drawing and sketching

I ended up doing a lot more drawing. Most sketches ended in posts in my Bird Sketches blog. In August I drew all auk species, and in December all Swan species, and I did a fair lot in between too, which was a lot of fun.   

Joining local bird observatories

Another positive note is that I joined both Flamborough Bird Observatory and Spurn Bird Observatory and I am really looking forward to a 2021 full of birds!