I'd like to briefly take you back to August 1985.

Madonna was at number one in the UK charts with "Into the groove" and whilst taking a "Young Ornithologists Club" (YOC - does that even exist any more?!) holiday at the Aigas Field Centre, Beauly, Highland, I was driven, with about twelve other young teenagers to Nairn, overlooking the Moray Firth, to go look for Bottlenose dolphins.

Dolphins we saw, as well as a pomarine skua if I remember correctly - but it was the young purple sandpiper that flew in off the sea and landed on my boots (I was wearing them at the time) that I remember most from that day.

Purple sandpipers breed in the far north - on Arctic islands, the tundra and some remote Scandinavian coasts. The young basically don't even see humans, before they spread their wings and fly south for the autumn or winter - and as such, rather like other wading birds such as turnstones, seem to be particularly "friendly" or "tame" during their formative encounters with humans.

The purple sandpiper that flew in off the Moray Firth in August 1985 and alighted onto one of my boots on the pebbly shore of Nairn, had probably been born on the shores of Svalbard (or somewhere similar) three months earlier - and I could well have been the first human it had ever seen. Perhaps. 

Over the past few weeks of lockdown, it has struck me that many of our birds (and mammals) have become a little more obvious. A little more approachable. A little "friendlier". A little more "tame". A little more "purple sandpiper".

I saw that Steve Backshall (president of my local wildlife trust these days) who lives locally on the Thames, has noticed a superb breeding year for the river's birds. No wash-creating boats to flood nests and no walkers to disturb young you see.

I've certainly also noticed a LOT more wildlife than I would have expected perhaps to have seen in more "normal times".  Now I walk like a countryman (I've been told) and tread very softly - far more softly than you might expect I can, being a 250lb gorilla - AND I'm hyper-aware, so yeah... I tend to notice more things than most  - but this Spring, so far, with many humans and their vehicles on lockdown - I'm noticing crazy amounts of stuff - a lot of it at far closer quarters than I'd have normally seen it.

I try to take a walk each day still (quite hard with my two boys needing me constantly) - and when I do, I'm bowled over by all the birds (especially) I'm seeing - at very close quarters.

Of course, this is the time of year when all birds are frantically breeding  - and you'll (we'll) see all kinds of young birds close up right now. I had to pull a fledgling house sparrow out of our kitchen sink drain a few days ago (it had flown into our kitchen window and stunned itself - then got trapped) and there do seem to be a lot of fledgling birds 'oochering' about right now  - but this year they all seem to be acting like young, first season, purple sandpipers - they just don't seem to be at all bothered by us humans at present - or far less than years gone by, I'd say.

Well... that's a nice plus for me I guess. In all this gloom. And with that thought in mind, I'll leave you for today with a photo I took on my dawn walk this morning. Of a fledgling robin that again, seemed completely unfazed by me and my (pocket) camera.

Stay well.

TBR.

Fledgling robin in hawthorn