Big Garden Birdwatch

 This year (with nowhere to go!) there really was no excuse not to  . . .

So 2-3pm today was spent peering out of the windows at the bird feeders, and taking periodic trips out into the garden to scare off the mob of starlings that kept descending and taking over the feeders!

And here's our tally:

• 15 Starlings
• 7 Goldfinches
• 5 Blue Tits
• 3 Chaffinch
• 3 Great Tits
• 2 Coal Tits
• 2 Dunnocks
• 2 Magpies
• 2 Robins
• 2 Sparrows
• 1 Siskin
• 1 Woodpecker (Great Spotted)

This Year's Snow?

I don't think we had any snow at all last year - but we did wake up this morning to a light covering . . .

Can't say it lasted long - but it was at least something different for the few hours it lasted!

And on the basis of the last few years that is probably it for 2021 . . .

Sunshine after the Storm

The latest storm of the season - Storm Christophe - landed this week, and while it wasn't that stormy in some ways, it did rain, a lot!

The paddling pool at the top of the garden was soon a rather large 'lake', which while it was draining off into the field next to us, couldn't quite keep pace with the amount of water still coming down and finding its way in from the top field.

Meanwhile on the other side of the crossroads the road had flooded again, although not as badly as in 2018.  Even so it was rather surprising to see someone riding their bike through the floodwaters!

 

By today the water was subsiding rapidly, and it had (mostly) stopped raining.  

The sun even came out for a little while - illuminating the first daffodil of the year.  Hopefully that means Spring is on its way!

In 2020 I Mostly Read . . .

The 2020 reading list:

September-December 2020 - Finally back to Dresden, with both new books now out. Had suspended the re-read at no.10 towards the end of last year, as I was getting ahead of myself. On to re-read the last five:

Turncoat - battling a skin-walker, and lots of wizard politics.

Changes - family revelations, facing down the Red Court, and Harry finds himself signing up with the Winter Fae.

Ghost Story - errm, trying to avoid spoilers, but yes, here he is mostly dead.

Cold Days - back in the land of the living, but as the Winter Knight, treachery and Outsiders.

Skin Game - a heist on Hades, working for the Denarians!

And with the re-reads done - dipped in to some short stories, in the Side Jobs and Brief Cases compilations before the first of the new releases:

Peace Talks - as it turns out this only leads in to the next book, so lots remains unresolved - the eponymous peace talks don't go well, more family issues and politics, and an epic battle in the offing.

August 2020 - In need of something unchallenging, a return to childhood with Enid Blyton's Secret Island (it was one of my favourites, so has remained on the book shelf!). Very illustrative in itself of how times have changed from the early C20th to the modern day.

July-August 2020 - Some historical reading for a change - Peacocks in Paradise - a history of Hafod and the Johnes family. I didn't quite get to the end of this for one reason or another (it wasn't easy lockdown reading), but I did enjoy what I read, and it certainly casts a light on C18th society and how that played out in rural Wales.

June-July 2020 - Back to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series - first of all the novella The October Man (with a German protagonist), I liked this one, the story was pacy and there were some good cross-references to the wider 'magic' story. Then a re-read of Lies Sleeping ahead of the new offering False Value. I found this a bit difficult to get into - it jumped around a bit too much maybe. There were some amusing references to other genre offerings (Hitch-hikers and The Librarians) and by about half way through I did settle in to it. Good, but not his best.

June 2020 - Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To - maybe I'm getting conscious of getting older! Didn't finish this but what I read was really interesting - it does sound as though there are drugs that we could be taking to inhibit the degrading effects of aging, and that maybe one day they will be more widely available - just not quite yet ...

April-May 2020 - Book 4 in the Pathway Tree series - The Cascade - all getting quite serious now, with more to come. Want to find out how this ends!

April 2020 - Sandi Toksvig's Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus - I really enjoyed this, a mix of snippets from her life and interesting and odd facts about London - with some really thought-provoking stuff mixed in. Recommended read.

March-April 2020 - Charlaine Harris' Lily Bard series - Shakespeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Champion, Shakespeare's Christmas, Shakespeare's Trollop - another great central character, and interesting stories / mysteries (picked them up cheap in a charity shop, but haven't got the fifth one yet).

January-March 2020 - F.D. Lee's Pathway Tree series, books 1-3 The Fairy's Tale, The Academy, and The Princess and the Orrery. Interesting and original fantasy, great characters, and a political edge to it all - kept the pages turning . . . looking forward to book 4.

2020 Solar Review

A mid-year to mid-year solar blog is proving a bit of a pain presentation-wise - so we've decided to move to an end of year review instead.  We also added a Modbus energy meter to our solar installation in November, which will give us accurate production, export and self-consumption stats from now on - so next year we will have a full year dataset of much more detailed (and hopefully interesting) statistics.

For now, here are the 2020 (January to December) highlights / lowlights for Solar Production.  As can be seen December's really poor weather has resulted in many of the bottom production figures, and May continues to dominate the top 10 list. 

Date	Bottom 10 Production	Date	Top 10 Production
18/12/2020	186	14/05/2020	26,133
30/11/2020	334	1/06/2020	25,268
11/01/2020	339	05/05/2020	25,254
07/01/2020	379	11/07/2020	25,129
03/12/2020	442	20/07/2020	25,125
21/12/2020	447	31/05/2020	24,931
20/11/2020	464	25/05/2020	24,881
13/12/2020	467	30/05/2020	24,835
28/02/2020	473	20/05/2020	24,701
16/12/2020	533	29/05/2020	24,675

This graph (pre-Modbus installation), contrasts Production with 'Deemed' Export - fixed at 50% 'of the production figure.

Finally we can see the impact  of working from home during the pandemic on our electricity consumption - a comparison with 2019 shows a notable increase in electricity use.   We're not entirely sure why there is such a leap in July 2020, but it is probably due to a combination of factors: family visitors, the end of that incredible spell of sunny weather, and Martin being issued with a work laptop.

See you in a year!