Consider which you would consider as five of the best UK birdwatching sites. It would be tricky to name your top five but I wonder whether the five sites picked out by Rachel Dixon in the Guardian would get in your top 100? 200? I guess every five are ‘five of the best’ in a way, just as every person who comments on this blog is one of my favourite commenters even if they are closer to the bottom of the list than the top! My much-lamented local football team, Rushden and Diamonds, was one of the best football teams in the world although they never got above League 1 and other countries’ football teams are available.
The selection, published yesterday are: Rathlin Island (a seabird colony, and a lovely place I agree, where there won’t be any nesting seabirds until next April so please make a note of it in your diary), Abbotsbury Swannery, the Ospreys at Loch Garten (great place – another to make a note of until next spring), Whisby nature reserve in Lincolnshire for its Nightingales (come back next May – you must have had Whisby in your top 10 surely?) and Rum with its 50 pairs of eagles (Blimey! Numbers have gone up rather a lot recently it seems).
Elsewhere in the Guardian yesterday is news of the opening of the Walthamstow Wetlands today. This sounds like a great place and many congratulations to Thames Water, London Wildlife Trust and others for this. However, it certainly isn’t Europe’s largest urban wetland at 211ha unless Rainham Marshes (the clue is in the name) at 479ha has moved from Purfleet. I should think there are others too – if you are well-travelled or well-informed you might be able to come up with some names.
[registration_form]
50 pairs of White-tailed Sea Eagles on Rum???
It’s been up for nearly 24 hours and hasn’t been corrected.
Why are so many of them drinking….??
Ambrose Bierce in his dictionary defined a Reporter as ‘a writer who guesses their way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words’. These sort of pieces, which smack of being fillers, certainly seem to fit in with that definition…
I remember watching the mighty Exeter City beat ‘your’ diamonds on many an occasion!
Ian – all too often, I agree.
I remember Irthlingborough Diamonds ( and Rushden Town). There was a centre forward called Ellis who must have scored hundreds of goals for Irthlingborough in the United Counties league.
Trevor – that was before my time but I followed R&D for a good many years from the Conference up to League 1 and then down again to the Conference and extinction. I miss them and the afternoons and evenings on the terraces, standing next to some foul-mouthed skinhead and singing ‘Hi Ho Rushden and Diamonds’ over and over again.