Song has a clear territorial function in many birds, and certainly in Great Tits. A male Great Tit’s territory is the area which he defends from other, neighbouring Great Tits, it is the area within which his mate will lay her eggs and it is the area most used for much of the nesting season….
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Paul Leyland – Buff-tailed Bumblebee
Social Distancing Week 1, Buff-tailed Bumblebee I had great plans this year to visit several parts of the UK looking for new insects, unfortunately the plans have come to a halt. I have decided instead to search locally, avoiding as much human contact as possible. Fortunately I live in a quiet area of North Yorkshire…
Betting
The week before last, I wrote a couple of blogs about my visit to Cheltenham racecourse for the first three days of the Cheltenham Festival (of racing). Those blogs were about birds and about people and this blog is about betting; next weekend I will post a blog about horse welfare. Horse racing is about…
Sunday book review – Under the Stars by Matt Gaw
It is only March, and I hope to read lots of brilliant books through the rest of 2020, but I am pretty sure this volume will be in this blog’s list of books of the year. It’s a slim volume, fewer than 200 pages of text and quite well-spaced text at that, but it packs…
Tim Melling – Asian Barred Owlet
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Tim writes: unlike most owls, Asian Barred Owlet is a daytime-active species. It sits around on open perches like this, and drops down onto its prey, which is usually large insects, but also lizards, small mammals and birds. It also goes by the name of Cuckoo Owlet and its scientific name Taenioglaux cuculoides translates as…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Natural solace (2)
On my way back from hearing my first Chiffchaff I came home the pretty way, along the quiet by-road, with the potholes, through the fields, and I saw in front of me, to my left, a Red Kite suddenly arch in mid air and dive down towards a field of sheep. Now I wasn’t expecting…
Looking ahead
My calendar is emptying rapidly – I expect yours is too. There are talks I’ve been asked to give which have been cancelled, no surprises there, and events to which I was hoping to go which have been cancelled or postponed. Even attending a family wedding in June looks somewhat up in the air… However,…
No surprise – and very sensible
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Bird song (8) – Chiffchaff
When I was a lad, birding just south of Bristol, my aim was to hear a Chiffchaff in March rather than let that event slip into April. In fact, my aim was to hear a Chiffchaff before my birthday on 29 March. I usually did it, but not always – that’s why it was a…