5MR Birding 2021

I've seen that many fellow bloggers have declared, or at least looked at, an area with a five-mile radius (5MR) from their home as a basis for some lockdown listing and beyond. Whilst my overarching self-interest for 2021 is my home 1k square, I do of course need a bit more to sustain year-round interest. I've already said that I could do with getting back into a bit of general birding, and so I've duly looked at what a 5MR area from my postcode looks like. Could this be enough to generate some birding interest ....

Remember this is Leicestershire: we have no coast, precious little woodland and even less heathland. The mainstays of birding interest in such a land-locked County are reservoirs, landfill sites and ex-gravel extraction sites. A quick scout around my 5MR area reveals zero reservoirs, zero woodland, zero landfill sites and zero ex-gravel extraction sites. But all is not lost: the entirety of my old 'Soar Valley South' patch falls within this, as does the whole of Aylestone Meadows along the wider Soar Valley floodplain, Croft Hill/Huncote Embankment and a number of big parks. Patently it also includes the 3km Foot-it area that was declared for January birding challenges in the past. I also noted that close to the north-north-eastern edge of the area, just shy of the City, is the mighty KP stadium.

Whilst I've not started yet, I very much doubt that I've missed anything if I were to start a 5MR Bird List 2021. Some of this area will be easily accessible by bicycle but that is not on the cards for some time yet as I continue to recover from surgery. I guess that the very local birding will have to do for now, but it would be good to take a few longer walks out of the square when the weather perks up and hopefully we'll have some easement before the first flush of spring. I'm not setting a target - lets get back into using the bins more often and take it from there!