Gummer's How

A shower blows in over the low hill of Gummer's How in the southern Lake District. The view beyond is to Ulverston and the Furness Peninsula. Wifie had scarpered at the sight of the incoming shower, so I was denied a blip model leaning casually on the trig point.

The walk up to the top of Gummer's How was my second walk of 2012. In the morning, while Wifie slumbered after being awake during the small hours, I went for a walk along the coast and back up over Arnside Knott. This is to be the 2012 regime, a daily walk of a respectable distance (a minimum of a mile, preferably several). I did this throughout 2010 and felt so much better for it, in 2011 I got into bad habits - another reason why I am trying to change my approach to blipping.

The bird list for the year has started reasonably well with 40 species. I will edit in the full list later to save boring anyone reading this now. Highlights were five tree sparrows in the garden (the highest number previously was three), both green and great spotted woodpecker, and a drake pintail with the mallards offshore at New Barns. I shall be keeping a list on paper this year to save losing track in this journal like last year.

Thank you to everyone for kind words on yesterday's blip. Sorry, I've been agonising over what to do for some time. I shall still be here most days, and will likely miss the occasional weekday each week when pressures of work prevent me getting out or spending too much time on here in the evenings. We'll see how it goes. We are planning to upgrade the PC soon which should make life easier.

The start of the 2102 birdlist, in order - wood pigeon, blackbird, house sparrow, jackdaw, collared dove, dunnock, robin, blue tit, tree sparrow, magpie, greenfinch, great tit, bullfinch, chaffinch, feral pigeon, starling, carrion crow, black-headed gull, coat tit, common gull, red-breasted merganser, lesser black-backed gull, curlew, redshank, great black-backed gull, cormorant, nuthatch, mallard, pheasant, pintail, oystercatcher, green woodpecker, goldcrest, long-tailed tit, great spotted woodpecker, jay, buzzard, rook, little egret, canada goose.