It's OK, my punctuation hasn't gone awry. I'm well aware this, my first butterfly of the year seen during a walk in the forest today, is a Comma. It's just that a comma would indicate there is more to come, whereas today felt much more like a full stop. The confinement measures currently in place in Belgium mean that we are only allowed to go out for local walks or exercise. The Sonian Forest is the only birdy place within reasonable walking distance of my apartment but, as with my regular patch just over a week ago, it was full of noisy kids, dogs running all over the place and far too many people to really enjoy. Despite all this, I still managed to find three different Middle Spotted Woodpeckers, one of which looked like she may have been excavating a nesthole, a Firecrest, some Hawfinches, and got to watch a Kingfisher doing a strange display flight high up amongst the trees. Not too bad, considering, but the birch pollen season has just begun so the forest is the worst place for me to be for the next month or so. It thus looks like my birding for the foreseeable future will be restricted to watching for migrants from my balcony. The past few days I've had groups of two and four Cormorants go over, as well as single Buzzard and Sparrowhawk, and I'm really looking forward to seeing my first Swallow of the year. Little things, but we have to make do with what we can at the moment and simply hope that we'll once again be able to visit the coast for the breeding waders or do a long hike in the Ardennes.
