I’ve been watching thousands of ants take to the sky from my back garden. It’s Flying Ant Day – well, here in NN9 of east Northants it is anyway. I haven’t actually seen any birds taking much notice of the silver-winged additions to the air today – often there are Black-headed Gulls going crazy at…
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Paul Leyland – Ichneumon sarcitorius.
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Social Distancing Week 17. Ichneumon sarcitorius Paul writes: I am always finding ichneumon wasps in and around my garden. Often they are running through the undergrowth, all the time twitching their long antennae. Then they’ll stop on a leaf or a flower to have a search round. They take a nice photograph but unfortunately most…
Guest blog – Where did our birds come from? by Alan Parfitt
Alan has always been a birder. In the 1950s, his father used to take him bird watching on Graveney Marshes in North Kent (what a great shame they are now to be more or less completely covered in solar panels). During his earning days, amongst other assignments, he was the environmental manager for a large…
Sunday book review – Uplands and Birds by Ian Newton
This is a monumental book of over 600 pages. It is everything one would expect from one of the UK’s greatest ornithologists; breadth, depth and clarity. This book, the author stresses, is about the uplands and about birds, but it isn’t just about upland birds. That’s true, but it is very birdy nonetheless. It acts…
Tim Melling – Nightjar
Tim writes: I came across a Nightjar, hiding in plain sight on a tree stump, and what an amazing camouflage he has. First of all his body is wedge-shaped with a dead flat back, but also his belly is flush to the ground, looking for all the world like a chunk of wood. He had…