Standing up for Nature
It’s not just passerines which sing – quite a lot of waders have striking (and rather easily recognised) songs. One of these is the Oystercatcher which is a Spring arrival at my local gravel pits. I heard Oystercatchers near to home on the same day that I heard my first Chiffchaff this year; back on…
This date is the earliest I have heard a Nightingale in Northants but I won’t be hearing one this evening in lockdown. In any case, for the last couple of years the regular haunts near my home have been bereft of Nightingales. My favourite Nightingale wood is Glapthorn Cow Pasture (a Beds, Cambs, Northants Wildlife…
There are lots of Goldfinches in my garden these days, and all other days of the year actually. They are much commoner now than they once were. Despite being delightful, gorgeous birds to look at, their song is an unimpressive twittering. Here are some examples, from Portugal; … and from Kensington Gardens, London, UK; ……
We have two species of ‘whitethroat’ warblers in the UK, the Common Whitethroat and the Lesser Whitethroat. They look rather similar, although there are lots of differences when you look closely, and they live in similar habitats (hedgerows and scrub) but they sound quite different. Both have now arrived in east Northants, with Lesser Whitethroat…
We know why bird song is a feature of Spring – it’s because the function of bird song is usually to defend a territory and its food and nesting resources and to attract a mate. Song is largely concentrated in the Spring in high latitudes because that’s when birds breed. But why is there a…
A bright yellow farmland bird, sitting atop a hedge and singing ‘A little bit of bread and no cheeeeeeese’ makes this a winning combination and a relatively easy bird to identify by song or sight. It’s a rattle followed by that cheeeeeese note – there’s nothing quite like it in most parts of the UK…
I’ve written quite a bit already about Great Tit song – but Blue Tits sing too. Although it’s a song that sounds very much like an extended call – no-one would call this a great song. It’s a good job that Blue Tits look so cute, isn’t it? Here are three examples. The first from…
This follows yesterday’s update. Louise writes: At the end of a tough twelve hours of lock-down bird race, I thought I’d give a summary. At least 30 people participated (the data entry is online, so I dont know all the answers yet) across Cambridgeshire. The top count for 11 hours of home-based birding and an…
Across the world, people are experiencing a shared concern for themselves and their loved ones and many are enduring a period of social distancing and being cut off from wildlife. But, also, many are discovering nature around them in ways that are giving them delight and solace. Humankind has never had this experience before. There…
Sedge Warbler and Reed Warbler are a little bit like Blackcap and Garden Warbler – not that they look like those species, or sound like those species, but that they are similar to each other in song and one (in this case the Sedge Warbler) usually gets back to the UK a good week or…