A New Normal

This Patrick's Day marks a two year anniversary.

Two years ago I and hundreds of my colleagues fled an oncoming threat.

Our email notifications beeped. Leave the building. Get out. 

People made for the door. They bundled equipment under their arms. Cars revved up to the main door. 
Screens, chairs, everything imaginable was thrown into them.

Come back when we call you.

The office has not been seen since. That call never came. 

Those first couple of weeks were the most surreal. Shelves, empty in supermarkets. Families cloistered at home together, before gradually finding a routine. 

For two years now I've lived a life undreamed of. A crusty, bearded hermit, alone by the lake with his dog and a laptop. 

And I've loved every minute of it. 




What's not to love.

Many birders out there took the opportunity to do lists at 2km/5km from home etc. 

The nature of birding here in Finland, the ability to focus on Viz-mig meant I never needed to go beyond the garden. Birds came to us. 

It's been an absolute joy to be able to familiarise myself with the environment around us, to fully immerse myself in the seasonal comings and goings of where we live. 


Grey-Headed Woodpecker - a garden star.



Black Woodpecker - a living machine gun.



Rough-Legged Buzzard


Northern Long-Tailed Tit


Nutcracker - spectacular corvid


Now two years on a new surrealism has set in. All eyes have turned to Russia. Will they or won't they, as the globe plays chicken with a nutcase and children sleeping in shelters pay the price.

Since my daughter was born I find such imagery particularly difficult to see.

The strange reaction to it all, the positivity displayed by EU countries now, when there's a tangible threat and white people are the refugees, vs. when Syrian or African children were washing up on Mediterranean beaches. Complexity upon complexity. Inaction after inaction. 

And so we work to keep this latest, thought dominating threat from our minds, carrying on as we have for these past two years. We enjoy the. Nature around us, we enjoy our sauna and enjoy our family life. 



Common Crane


Black Woodpecker


Caspian Tern



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