Today the RSPB has issued new advice to its million members and the public at large on feeding birds in gardens. The new advice represents a big change to current practice (amongst many), won’t be universally popular and will cost the RSPB a lot of money. This advice is based on the perceived dangers of…
Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering
RSPB – UK’s tallest bird, the Crane, has record high year
UK’s tallest bird, the Crane, has record high year A record number of Cranes bred in the UK last year, with 87 pairs raising 37 young, bringing the total to around 250 individuals Cranes went extinct in the UK around four hundred years ago due to overhunting and the loss of wetlands, but thanks to…
First Hen Harrier for Barbados?
I posted some photographs of a ringtail harrier a few days ago (click here) without being very forthcoming about their origin. Such birds are difficult to identify as there are quite a few options, and the probabilities of seeing the different species vary depending on where in the world you are. These photographs came from…
Which harrier?
I was sent these images asking me for an opinion on which species of harrier is involved. The discussion around the bird centres on whether it is a Northern Harrier or Hen Harrier – but you might have other views. It was photographed in a location where neither of those species is a breeding bird…
A brief encounter with a Golden Eagle
Heading home from our Edinburgh family in late July we took the A68 south and gave a little cheer as we breasted Carter Bar and passed into England again – it’s nothing anti-Scottish, we give a little cheer when we are heading north and pass into Scotland too. Seconds later I noticed a young Golden…
Swift Awareness Week
Comments Off on Swift Awareness Week
70 events celebrate the amazing SwiftUK Swift Awareness Week, which starts on Saturday 1 July, has 70 events running across the UK, from Devon to Aberdeenshire and from North Wales to East Sussex.It precedes the parliamentary debate on 10th July about the installation of nest sites for red listed urban birds like the swift in all…
Local patch
I spent a couple of hours at my local patch of Stanwick Lakes this morning. I was hoping to catch up with some more spring migrants as Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Swallow and Little Ringed Plover are more or less it for me so far. It was a sunny but cool morning. As we neared the site…
British Birds, March 2022
A cracking issue of British Birds this month (as almost every month) with an attractive Common Scoter on the cover alerting the reader to a fascinating paper (Metcalf, Bradnum, Dunning and Lees) inside describing overland nocturnal migration of this duck across Britain revealed partly by the new nocmig technology. Aren’t birds brilliant? It’s almost time…
Some small but significant bright spots in a landscape of gloom
The new BirdLife International red list of European birds is worth a long and detailed read – at first glance it seems to be a tale of woe with a few bright patches. So that seems quite accurate. But the fact that the bright patches are the result of conservation action gives us all hope….
Eagles off – beyond our ken.
There have been rumours of this for quite a while but this news is very disappointing. The account on the website is very apologetic and rightly so, I think, as this will feel like a let down for many supporters of the project. I have heard that as well as some local birders’ being uneasy…