Standing up for Nature
I was at Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire, on Sunday afternoon just as the weather turned nice. And a friend was there yesterday at dusk. At the moment, at dusk, it is a great place to see Hen Harriers as they come in to roost. A group of us had fantastic views on Sunday of several ringtails…
I’ve meant to come back to this for a while. Do you remember the dead Starlings found on a road in Anglesey? Well the police say that they were avoiding a predator – see here. I wonder. I’m not sure that the burden of evidence is anything like good enough. I’m happy to put it…
There is plenty of interest to read in this month’s British Birds. For example, Adrian Pitches’s always-excellent News and Comment section talks about Werritty, the first successful breeding of Spoon-billed Sandpipers at Slimbridge, our own wild-hacking story, the impacts of a heatwave on Guillemots in the Pacific and much more. But as you can see…
There is even more in the latest issue of Birdwatch than I let on earlier. There’s an excellent article by Dominic Mitchell on revisiting a former local patch of his which is strong evidence for my contention (oft broken, I admit) that one should never go back to a place where one loved the wildlife…
There’s a cute owl on the cover of the latest Birdwatch magazine and a cute Bill Oddie too. What’s not to like? But lest you think you can just gawp at the cover in your local newsagent shop then let me tell you it’s worth sitting down with a mug of tea and some Digestive…
This was Titchwell RSPB nature reserve on Friday morning; it was rather dreich (don’t you love that word? Apparently we all do!). But it’s difficult to have a bad day at Titchwell – it’s a very good nature reserve. I had three conversations with people who wanted to say ‘Well done!’ to Wild Justice and…
This year I have kept a closer eye on birds in and seen from, or heard from, my garden in east Northants. It has been fun for me. I’ve spent a bit more time in the garden as a result and recorded what I have seen with a bit more care (see note at bottom…
Much as I love Christmas, I was pleased that the January Birdwatch dropped through the letter box this morning. You may find me slipping away to a quiet place in the house to read it over the next few days. No spoilers here but the winners of the Birders’ Awards are all very worthy winners….
You can tell it’s election day because the media are grasping for non-political stories today. These two stories are widely covered in the print and broadcast media: Parakeets – not Jimi Hendrix’s fault – Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Mail Dead Starling mystery on Anglesey – BBC, Guardian, Times, Metro and NorthWalesLive. I had a chat with…
November has been a bit of a dank month and most of my birdwatching was done in the first half of it. I added one species to the 2019 garden list which was also a new species, ever, for the garden. The species in question was a fly-over but its wingbar and inane twittering called…