Bank Holiday Monday proved to be a taster of spring – it feels as though spring is coiled and waiting to be released. I started with a walk at the local former airdrome on the Northants/Beds border. Eight of the nine wind turbines were spinning round even though there was little wind at ground level….
Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering
Vote Hen Harrier as national bird
Today, the voting for Britain’s national bird starts in earnest. The 10 shortlisted species, on the basis of 70,000 votes cast last autumn are (in alphabetical order): Barn Owl Blackbird Blue Tit Hen Harrier Kingfisher Mute Swan Puffin Red Kite Robin Wren You can vote now and right up until after the polls close in…
Same old song
A reader of this blog was shocked, and somewhat horrified, to find this leaflet flutter out of his Farmers Guardian last week. He cancelled his subscription. This would be an excellent leaflet to give to a mixed group of students – biology students and media studies students – and ask them to analyse it….
This month’s Birdwatch
I travelled into London yesterday which meant that I could read this month’s Birdwatch (the one with the Crane on the cover). My ‘political birder’ column is about vicarious liability. Usually,I look through the accounts of the rarities in Birdwatch and think to myself a mixture of ‘I’d never have realised what that was’, ‘I wish…
A laughing matter
Birdwatching is such a laugh. Standing for 4-5 hours in the rain (which occasionally turned to sleet just to show how cold it was) and a biting wind is our idea of fun. I blame that Findlay Wilde for having a birthday and luring us all there with the promise (richly fulfilled) of cake. But…
And that quiz?
This list of birds was from…? It’s a slightly odd list – comprising winter and summer visitors, but not many of either. Waxwing, Fieldfare and Redwing, and Swallow, Blackcap and Whitethroat, but not much else. That’s a bit odd. Mostly big birds that are easy to see, too. I told you these came from multiple…
Quiz
OK – time for another little quiz, thanks to the wonder of Birdtrack. The list below is a birdlist from a site I have visited many times, not primarily to see birds, but then you can’t help but see birds if you have your eyes and ears tuned in. Mallard Pheasant Grey Heron Red Kite…
Birdwatch 2015
Comments Off on Birdwatch 2015
I haven’t quite finished my Christmas shopping and yet the first Birdwatch magazine of 2015 has arrived through my letter box. And it’s a good one. Chris Packham won the poll for Conservation Hero of the Year – quite rightly – for his actions on Malta, Hen Harriers and so much more. I’ve been lucky…
Shifting baselines
I was in the library at The Lodge the other day, reading for writing. It’s inevitable that I bump into quite a few people I know, and have a few conversations about life, the universe and everything. They are mostly conversations about birds and nature conservation. Two of them illustrate the scale of change in…
B(l)ooming great!
There are more Bitterns breeding in the UK than at any time in living memory. In fact, there are about 13 times as many bitterns now as there were in 1997, as there are over 140 booming males compared with 11 then. That’s one hell of a recovery – in fact, one heaven of a…