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…
Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering
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…
Boomtime for bitterns
I’m delighted that the RSPB and Natural England have been able to announce that booming bitterns have passed the 100 mark – and reached 104 booming males in fact. Given that in 1997 (incidentally, the year before I became the RSPB’s Conservation Director) there were only 11 booming males this is a remarkable and very welcome recovery. And let’s…
In the rough
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On Tuesday I spent several hours in the rough but didn’t have anything to complain about. I don’t know Fife that well and enjoyed being shown around by my host for this trip (of whom, more, probably, later). We looked in at the Eden Estuary and admired the seals as a whimbrel flew up the…
Songbird Survival
I did say that the Game Fair might keep this blog going for ages! In one of his very amusing and entertaining, though not convincing, rants, Robin Page voiced the views that Songbird Survival was a very good organisation and that it was obvious that sparrowhawks and other predators were part of the reason for…
Bird list USA
This is just a list of birds I saw in the USA between 3 May and 15 June. If you are an American birder and think there is anything odd about this list – things I should have seen but haven’t listed or things I claim to have seen but seem very unlikely – then…