From Twitter: Tim Bonner’s best tweet since his Linnethawk one. Worth a retweet to help spread the message to move away from poisonous lead ammo – some people don’t know whether they are coming or going though ( see BASC spoke with forked tongue?). In other news from the shooting bubble, Duncan Thomas has changed…
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Hen Harriers in the news
This long read’ (not too long) in The Herald is well worth a few minutes of your time. It’s a refreshingly sane and well-informed account of illegal persecution of Hen Harriers in Scotland. Let’s hope Roseanna Cunningham has read it (she will have done). The SNP government is dragging its feet on its response to…
Paul Leyland – Syritta pipiens
Social Distancing Week 16. Syritta pipiens. Paul writes: Syritta pipiens is one of the commonest garden hoverflies. It isn’t as obvious as lots of its bigger or more brightly coloured cousins but once you know what to look for spotting it is quite simple. They’re about 7mm long, very narrow bodied with a rounded head…
Sunday book review – Cottongrass Summer by Roy Dennis
This book, out of 40+ I reviewed in 2020, was one of two titles I chose as my wildlife book of the year – I recommend it highly. You can buy this book from Bookshop.org and I have set up a booklist to make that easy through this link https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/MarkAvery Disclosure: I am an…
Guest blog – Rebirth by Danilo Selvaggi
Danilo Selvaggi is Director General of Lipu, Italy’s BirdLife partner, having been in charge of institutional relations. He has a long involvement with environmental politics, communications and cultural ecology, and been an adviser to the Environment Ministry. A graduate in philosophy, he has focused especially on the social and cultural implications of philosophy, especially in…
Independence Day lessons
This video is doing the rounds of social media and brought a smile to my face. An American friend sent it to me. It’s clever and funny, and I suspect it is sufficiently well produced that it will be seen by Republican voters as well as Democrats, and therefore might influence the Presidential election. Using…
Tim Melling – Goshawk
Tim writes: I was out on the Peak District Moors in early March and had a great stroke of luck when this female Goshawk cruised over me. I identified her as a female by her large size, but also by the rather indistinct face pattern and yellow eye. Males are smaller with a noticeably dark…
We’re all ageing…
We’re all ageing but in birders’ parlance this word often means working out the age of a bird (often from details of its plumage). And sexing means telling the sex of a bird likewise (whatever else you may have thought). When British Birds arrived at my swanky house this week, as well as an excellent…
Guest blog – Tracking Robins in the Soundscape by Murray Marr
I’ve been measuring the seasonal vocal outputs of various songbirds on Midhurst Common’s woodlands in West Sussex, since 2003. This was when, on a whim, part of a regular dog walk started to include ten minutes of counting of singing individuals of each species within a series of short time frames. I do this simple,…