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A farmland bird which has declined greatly due to agricultural changes – notably the switch from spring-sown to autumn-sown cereals, drainage of wetlands and the move from hay to silage. In southern England at least, Lapwings have become, as breeding birds, much more concentrated on nature reserves. But there you will still hear the peee-wit…

Entries are beginning to trickle in for this Nature-writing Challenge. Thank you for those, and the promises of more, but you have plenty of time, 10 days, to add to the number. Across the world, people are experiencing a shared concern for themselves and their loved ones and many are enduring a period of social…

I’ve been in my garden a lot in the last four weeks. I can make phone calls, read things and think – I can’t easily write – but I can also watch birds. And so I have 22 complete bird lists out of 28 days (they are complete in the sense that I made a…

Curlews are pretty spectacular birds: large with amazing bills and a loud bubbling song. Once common in grasslands, wetlands and uplands across the UK they are now rare as breeders outside of the uplands. There is a pair of Curlew in the Nene Valley about six miles from my home, and I occasionally go to…

The Golden Plover has a wonderfully evocative song – only really heard in the UK on moorland areas up in the hills. The sound of it takes me right back to places like the Durham Moors and the Flow Country of northern Scotland. Golden Plovers will be singing in both those places today – I…