Here we are again. Nothing special to record other than the usual birds are turning up in the garden for our weekly Feederwatch census.

I have been toying with the idea of challenging myself to doing another Bigby this year but I decided today that while I will be out and about and birding happily throughout the year my various other commitments are going to stop me doing a really full-on Bigby so I shall potter along and see what I can find but not bust a gut in the process … not this year anyway.  2014, however, is going to be another story altogether – I will certainly be retired by then and I am sure J will want me out of her hair so I shall tighten up the old bike and sally forth regularly.

There was a nice leader in the NYT this morning:

On what other day in the calendar do you feel as though you’ve been handed a large lump of time, to be shaped as you see fit? When else do you feel time’s door closing so solidly behind you as you step out into the new world? We are like children on a bright winter’s day, all sent out to play with no demands or excuses to stay behind.

You may be a maker of resolutions — even a keeper of them — or you may have resolved to make none at all this year. It makes no difference. A resolution, after all, is just a plan to take change by the throat, when we all know that that is what change does to us, whether we like it or not. There is simply no telling what this new year will bring, and that is the very thing that makes it so new.

Meanwhile, here is what we wish ourselves more of in the year ahead: