New Year, for us, pink-footed geese calling as they fly over house have no such concept, although the solstice and increasing day length does have meaning as biological clocks work on that rhythm, redshank called from marshes, the ever watchful sentinel of the marsh

I no longer feel anything about this arbitrary date in terms of wildlife, on so many years I have seen the same wintering birds which arrive here from arctic north and spend entire winter, a date range of Oct 2020 - March 2021.

For me the older New Year bizarrely still roughly marked by the UK tax year is as close to a change as you can pinpoint here in nature, by the last week of March many wintering birds are gone and some African birds are here, some birds breeding.

It is hard to point to a date in which a natural cycle can be said to “start” or “end” but as with locations, arbitrary human names and lines on a map I am no longer much interested in terms of nature experience in this human psycho-geography.

So Happy Human New Year, from the pink-footed geese will come knowledge of the moon cycle, the change in when to feed of monthly behaviour, and the seasonal day length which causes birds to move to NW ready to follow or preempt a green wave of plant growth to the north.