From Birds to Legs... life moves on

 

Last May, 2020 I put my final entry on “The Bird Man of Allestree” blog (Allestree.blogspot.com) after 4 and a half years. I did not close it down, just in case, but I have now decided that apart from the fact that most of the posts are well out of date, I want to move on.    

So I have decided to retitle the blog “The Microtibialist of Derby”, and I plan to use the new blog (name) for a periodic post about different aspects of my leg collection. Those of you who were with me before will I’m sure recall that the birding news sometimes included references to my leg collection, but it is not intended that the new title will include birds!!.  If you did not cancel the automated mail from my blog to your computer then you will receive this communication explaining these planned changes. If you do not want to receive future blog postings on the new subject, there is a facility on the blog site or at the end of this post, to cancel future news.

I have never had any definitive information about people who read my blog, and only if a reader put a comment on the blog, or told me in some other way did I know them.     I did get statistics about the number of hits, with world numbers, but no names!! So any previous followers who are now leaving me….. goodbye!!

I do get irritated when I surf a subject to find that the sites I find are historic or discontinued, so it is my intention to take down my 200 old posts which are now historic …. In due course!!

The word Microtibialist is my creation and therefore not well known, if atall.  I have no idea how many people, if any, will be interested in the subject of my small-leg collection, but I will do whatever I can to publicise and promote the new name. My plan is to probably do one post a month, c 700 words, with photographs. 

I will have to use my son in law’s computer skills to make sure that I move to a new name and contact that works OK. So bare with me in the interim.. things may hiccup.

                       

These are a couple of examples of legs that I will be writing about, to wet your appetite.

Regards

David Bennett      The Microtibialist

 

Normal Service will be resumed, when possible!

You may not realise it, but this is the 200^th post I have put on my blog, the first one over 4 years ago, on 24^th December 2015. 200 posts encompassing 148,000 words!

So reluctantly, I have decided that this will be the last of my regular posts. I kept publishing despite cancer and pneumonia, but Coronavirus has defeated me. The restriction of not being able to go birding wherever and whenever I want to, has taken away the pleasure of my hobby that I have enjoyed writing about for 4 years. It does not help that the future is so unclear and so there is no target to aim for.

The blog has had 19,500 “hits”, of which the UK - 8,600, Russia -  3,300, and USA - 2,100. Most hit? November 2016,  entitled “Goosed in Exmouth” with 98 hits!

Readers have been very tolerant of my filling my posts by including non-birding experiences ( Legs, Hotels, Meals etc), when that was not the objective of “The Bird Man of Allestree”.  I will continue to write the occasional article, if there is something of substance to write, about birds, but you will not read these posts unless you maintain your link to my postings, or you check my blog occasionally.

At least I will no longer have the commitment that I MUST do my blog on a Sunday night, a commitment that I have maintained about 98%!

So, before I go!!! (notice the carefree use of the word “so”!), some bits of news.

Derby CC.     Derby City Council Parks department asked me to write an article about bird watching under the Coronavirus climate entitled.

It was a pleasure to write the 1200-word article and centred round 3 bird watching sessions in my garden. You can find the article at

            https://www.inderby.org.uk/parks/news/  Birdwatching during lockdown.

Writing that article motivated me to think whether I could write an article for the local paper to  give examples and encouragement to residents and children to try birding in their own gardens, or whilst on an exercise walk.    I circulated many friends to ask them to send me their birding experiences, and I received some good and interesting accounts that I hope to use to build into an article. Not sure which paper I will pitch it at, but I will let you know when and if.

My enthusiasm appears to have motivated my daughter Sarah and her husband Julian to have a well-stocked bird table and this is a brilliant picture taken by Julian only the other day.

 The given title was:   "Social distancing does not apply Dad - we are all family."

Holidays.      I am pleased to tell you that all our now abortive travel plans, have been resolved. We did not want money back so the continuation in the future on revised dates produced credit notes all round. Sure, you might say, what else could they do. Well there has been some news about tour operators making life difficult for travellers who wanted to opt out, so we were pleased that our plans ran smoothly.

Whilst we have no idea when we will be going away, from the weekend in Scarborough we have an extra 10% and from Tui in Majorca an extra 20%, and an extra 7 months annual travel insurance for peanuts!!

Taxation.       What?  I am not a tax adviser (now!) but having used some of this downtime to include checking my PAYE for 2019/20, I again noticed an Inland Revenue error which I have had 3 years in a row, each one leading to me making (and getting) some tax back. This year it is over £100 so it was worth the effort.

All I will say is that if you have income from savings (dividends and deposits) and they exceed the annual tax-free allowances make sure the Inland Revenue are using your figures. Code notices have provisional adjustments for tax due on these amounts of income and the actual amount for the year is not known until after the 5^th April. Only then can the correct tax be worked out.

There are too many reports of tax liabilities being wrong. CHECK YOUR TAX CODING NOTICE and check it again at the end of the year when you have the exact figures.

So, until further notice..

                        T T F N

                        Pip Pip

                        Chin chin

                        Toodlepip

                        Tattyby

David 

(The Ed: sends her love)