Spotting things: Birds and nests. Finding things to look out for on a long car journey. Finding the nesting roof sparrows. ‘The List Game’ for trains. Spotting the beaver moon and trying to photo it. Bird game. Making friends with station pigeons. Looking for flowers on Boxing Day.

279 – Spotting Things:  Nests

Friday 28 March.  Cloudy, 12°C

This might be the first challenge we’ve done from the car (hence the fairly rubbish pictures).  We’re driving on A roads a bit tonight and B is bird spotting when she gets obsessed with crows and nests.  I see her point.  The trees are still bare and we pass several groups of tall big trees, filled with crows, which have a lot of large nests clearly visible in the branches.  We’re both fascinated.  We’re not sure we’ve clocked before that some birds nest in groups.  Once out of the car we start obsessively crow watching.  It’s clearly the right week of the year.  We can’t move for jackdaws attempting to manoeuvre sticks that are either a lot longer than they are or to wide for their beaks.  They are fabulous entertainment.

249 – Another bird spotting day…

Sunday 27 April.  Sunny.  17°C

Another walk and another bird spot. We try a different approach this time. New rules – you can only spot one species once. So once you’ve got a pigeon or a seagull you have to move on. But you can spot them anywhere and extra points for hearing them.

New rules are good and we make a lot of progress. We go through pigeons, seagulls and ‘crows’ very quickly (we should probably try and distinguish between different types of the latter but not there yet. Except magpies. Magpies are their own subset!). We get into some trees and hear very loud nesting small birds. We try and spot them but completely fail until suddenly a little yellow one flies right in front of us. We’re both very excited.

We move on towards the Bay and find swans, grebes, geese and cormorants waiting for us. Excitingly the cormorant fishes up an eel… and takes ages to work out how to eat it… but we still fail to get a photo.

239 – Spotting the nesting roof sparrows

Wednesday 7 May. Sunny. 15°C

Wandering around in Margam Park on Monday looking for deer we came across some very noisy sparrows nesting in the rafters of one of the out buildings. They were funny and chatty. Popping out of one hole and in another and very keen to broadcast their presence. Back at home we keep an eye out when walking round the streets and find several corners with load sparrow chattering coming from the roof joists. They’re not as visible but we’ll keep watching out during nesting season and try and catch them flying in.

271 – Spotting things on the motorway

Saturday 5 April. Sunny and windy. 15°C

Another driving day. When B was little we used to spot variations on rainbow cars (ie, red car, then orange car, then yellow car, etc). She’s now graduated to spotting Teslas instead. After an hour or so she’s getting bored and I try a new idea.

Me: “See what nature things you can spot. Animals, birds of prey, that sort of thing. See if you can get a photo of anything interesting for the challenge.”

Sometimes I worry taking photos takes away the fun but this adds to the difficulty for sure. I’m hoping for some lovely bird of prey shots. There were loads on the M4 driving up but the A12 doesn’t seem to have the same attraction for them. We get a lovely horsebox with horse visible inside which we stalk for a bit. There’s a lot of mistletoe in the still bare trees and she gets that. Then she spots the moon and gets that too.

There’s a lot she can’t react quickly enough to photo and she gets cross. Sadly most of these are roadkill. We spot a fox and a badger just a metre or so from each other and ponder what happened (were they fighting? Did the badger get killed first and the fox was scavenging). B gets upset and doesn’t appreciate the two other dead foxes, a dead hedgehog and what looks like a dead owl.

Coming back on the M4 a week later the kites are out in force. We stop at Legoland and spend the time in the queues watching them fly overhead and wondering what they’re spotting. There are at least four. As we drive further West we keep spotting kites that turn out to be seagulls and start awarding points for legitimate identifications.

166 – The List Game

Saturday 19 July.  Cloudy.  22°C

We’re on the train visiting relatives. Both of us can get a bit travel sick so we’re playing the list game. B with her headphones on. Sometimes we go off and try something else but we come back to this one every time we feel a bit queasy.

First off – write a list of around 10 things to spot. We had:

• A seagull
• Weeping willow tree
• Canal
• Horse
• A person with a dog
• A person not on train or station platform
• A little fluffy cloud
• A flying bird
• A pink flower
• A bird on a chimney

Can be anything. When B was little it would be shorter – say 3-5 things – and when we’d seen them all we’d do a new list. Now she’s adding up how many she sees of all of them.

We get a lot of horses and so many flying birds that, in the end, we cancel the category. B puts a tally line for each one- or each 10 flowers. I think she’d be better with each ‘group’ of flowers but she disagrees and the tally lines for that get very long. Some things we get a lot of quickly but it takes a surprisingly long time to spot a ‘person with a dog’ and a canal (we widen category to river after missing the one I knew was near Reading station). We have to wait to get near a station for the birds on chimneys and the seagulls finally appear around Swindon which is ridiculously far from the sea.

If we see something else interesting we add it on. B spots a small (‘baby!’) deer in a field and we each see several different birds of prey. It helps pass the time very well and lingers in the brain. Two days later we’re still keeping an eye out for weeping willow trees.

55 – Trying to photo the beaver moon

Friday 7 November. Bit cloudy. 14°C

We’ve had a long day with too many trains and we’ve not done a challenge. Then we notice, out of the window, the remains of the beaver full moon. It’s two days since it was properly full but the first time the cloud’s parted enough to see it. We think we’ll take a photo and that’s where the fun starts.

The train windows are perfectly reflecting the carriage. The moon appears like a round light. We try and cancel out the reflection but it isn’t happening so we enjoy it instead. B moves her head so it appears on her chin, on her forehead, on her hand. We probably look like idiots but it was a fun moment.

53 – The bird game

Sunday 9 November.  Cloudy.  13°C

This challenge lasted a few days and lots of trains. It started on the platform at Cardiff Central on Friday night. B is following a lovely brown pigeon. It’s making it’s way quietly behind the seats and down the wall of the platform and she’s following it. After a while we realise it could be a challenge. We write a 55 on a piece of paper and attach a bit of sticky bun but when we put it down on the floor the pigeon flies away. Disappointed, we look for another one but they all seem to have gone. There’s a seagull though. We put it down and get the camera out but it’s too late. Like lightning it’s picked the crumb up, torn the note and deposited it down on the tracks in a tiny bundle.

We decide this is a long haul game and give up for now. On the train we define the rules. We’re spotting birds on station platforms and station roofs. Flying birds don’t count. 5 points for a pigeon, 10 for a seagull and 20 for anything else. We draw in the end. B spots lots of seagulls but I catch up at the end with a crow on the tracks at Bristol Parkway.

12 – Making friends with injured pigeons

Friday 19 December.  Cloudy.  12°C

We’re back at Cardiff Central and watching a seagull. B thinks it’s a baby. It’s got a bit of brown on its head but it’s acting very grown up, trying to destroy the bin bag on the platform. Then a pigeon goes by and B gets distracted:

B: “Oh look! It’s got a bad foot.”

It’s a really rubbish foot, all swollen and enlarged. It’s not putting it’s weight on the other one either. It’s clearly a tough life being a pigeon. At this point we remember I’ve got some bread in my bag and B starts making friends.

This being pigeon land she soon has LOTS of new friends. Another one has a bad foot and gets more food. Then a white one appears that seems to have a broken wing. It’s all twisted and it’s not moving well. It gets to all the bread first though and when the train comes in it flies away with the others. We’re left to wonder at the resilience of pigeons.

6 – Looking for flowers on Boxing Day

Friday 26 December.  Sunny.  7°C

It’s Boxing Day and we’re going out for a walk. We’re not very focused on it. I’ve got not ideas so I turn to B. She’s not got many either. Then she gets one.

B:”Let’s see how many flowers we can find”.

I’m cynical. I don’t think there are many flowers in midwinter. We’re not walking near any gardens so we’ve only got what’s growing wild.

L: “Really? Do you think we’ll find any? Why don’t we do berries instead?”

B: “No. Not berries. We’ll find flowers”.

We set off and she’s a bit right. We do find a few. There’s something that looks like cow parsley and a few teeny blossoms on a tree. We also find several dead flowers (lots of dead buddleia) and have an argument over whether something on an ivy stem is flowers or berries. I still think we should do berries too. There are lots of different ones of those and some rosehips. We both get cross and then we give up.

It’s not the most exciting or exhilarating challenge but, on the upside, we have both spent quite a while exploring the landscape and learning what winters all about, even if it did make us tetchy.