Standing up for Nature
Swift has won the vote to be Spain’s bird of the year. This video is a welcome reminder of the fact that spring is coming closer, the days are lengthening, there is more bird song every day and that Swifts will return to our skies in three months. And it’s just a good video! For…
I’ve been listening to the cricket commentary of the match between Sri Lanka and England over the last few days – it’s going very well for us. The commentators are all still based in the UK but they are doing their best, and doing pretty well, to bring the match to life for us all….
I came across this paper partly because it cites a paper I co-authored on Roseate Tern conservation many, many years ago. And the Roseate Tern is a species very close to my heart (see Fighting for Birds Chapter 3, In the pink – roseate terns). It’s a fascinating study which unlocks some of the facts…
The Blackcap which was seen in my garden on 6 December didn’t show up again until yesterday, 4 January, when it (or another male Blackcap) spent a large part of the middle of the day on the fat balls. We were given this rather flashy fat ball feeder and this Blackcap seems to love it…
The excellent SEO (Sociedad Espanola de Ornitologia, the Spanish partner of BirdLife International) is having a vote for their bird of the year and the choice offered is between Iberian Grey Shrike, Common Swift and Montagu’s Harrier. Last year the successful species was Quail (which was also up against Montagu’s Harrier and Iberian Grey Shrike)….
I’m a poor naturalist but a half-decent ornithologist and birdwatcher. I haven’t seen many birds this year – certainly in terms of number of species. Although I know of many who do (overwhelmingly males) I do not keep a bird list for the year. Some of my friends and acquaintances would be able to reel…
This is a conservation success story through a combination of site and species protection where the main small population resides in Morocco… … and reestablishment in the species’s former range.
We get wintering Blackcaps in our garden every year, and this spring there was a resident bird through the summer in our neighbourhood too. Yesterday, 6 December, there was a male Blackcap on the fatballs in our garden. That’s great. But it is also the earliest winter record, ever, in our garden. The previous earliest…
The view from the bathroom window of the ivy on the shed is always worth a look. At this time of year the sinking sun (coming from the right in the image above) catches the top of the ivy in late afternoon and a group of House Sparrows sit in the ivy catching the last…
The power of birds of prey is illustrated well in this little article about what you might see in Yorkshire – 6 of the 14 species are raptors. Of course, the article does not say that North Yorkshire is known as the UK capital of illegal raptor persecution! The Red Kite above (ahem) is joined…