Yesterday was a cold morning but the air was still and so it didn’t feel bitter on my regular walk around Stanwick Lakes. Great tits, dunnocks, chaffinches and robins were singing in the cold morning air. The lakes in the ex-gravel pits were partly frozen but most had small open areas of water in which…
Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering
Little owls – would you miss them?
My American friend who visited recently would have quite liked to have been shown a little owl, and I would have quite liked to have shown him one, but they are dropping out of my life. And if you can’t see a little owl in Northamptonshire then where can you see them, I ask? The…
Red kites
I see red kites quite often over my garden in east Northants now – practically every day if the weather is OK and I spend enough time looking. I saw one as I was on my way to the Post Office on Tuesday, and on both Tuesday and Wednesday, on trips to London, I saw…
British Birds review of Blogging for Nature, or, Adrian Pitches is a very nice man.
Adrian Pitches is a very nice man – I’ve always thought that, even when he was sticking a microphone under my nose and asking me questions for the BBC in the north of England. But now he has given Blogging for Nature a very kind review in British Birds. Adrian, what a fine man he…
Fieldfares
This is the season when, as I drive around east Northants, a small flock of large thrushes will fly out of the roadside trees or be looking for worms in the grass fields. They are chunky and have patches of grey on their heads and backs – and are fieldfares. These thrushes come to see…
Not quite the same
I have an article in the current issue of The Field and one in the current issue of Birdwatch magazine and both are on hen harriers. Not surprisingly, given their readerships, the two articles are written from slightly different perspectives. I have both magazines in my hands right now and they are interestingly different. I…
Birdwatch column
My column in the November Birdwatch magazine is on the subject of hen harriers and their persecution by grouse moor managers. Rather than tell you what it says I’d like to tell you that Birdwatch is asking your opinion on the subject. Is it time for a change of tack by the wildlife conservation organisations…
A tale of three warblers
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I find that I carry British Birds around with me for ages before I get around to reading it and so this blog is about the September issue which contains the report of the Rare Breeding Bird Panel. The contrasting fortunes of three warblers struck me as I read through the text; Cetti’s, Savi’s and…
Never seen that before
Last weekend I revisited one of the haunts of my youth – a place called Steart or Stert. And I’m going with Stert as I’ve always known it as ‘Sturt’ rather than ‘Steert’. As spotty teenagers at Bristol Grammar School we would, under the guardianship of masters Derek Lucas and Tony Warren, make two autumn…
Buy Birdwatch today
Buy Birdwatch today, or tomorrow, or soon, if you’d like to see my first monthly column as the ‘Political Birder‘. I’ll be writing about those issues that affect the birds you see around you – and asking you to do something about them. I see Birdwatch‘s website describes me as a ‘regular’ – I still…