I live in east Northamptonshire at the moment, in a District Council area called East Northants which is the eastern end of Northamptonshire and is one of seven district councils; East Northants, Northampton, Wellingborough, Corby, Kettering, Daventry and South Northants. But soon Northamptonshire is being split into two new local council areas: West Northants and…
Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering
Swifts
My run of seeing Swifts every day above my garden lasted from 1 May until 13 August – I think that is 105 days. They were difficult to get on the last couple of those days – both times it took until late evening to see one. But none on 14 and 15 August and…
The milk of avian unkindness
When I was a kid our milk was frequently attacked by marauding gangs of Great Tits and Blue Tits. For younger, perhaps puzzled, readers this was a long time ago in the days when doorstep deliveries of milk were the norm and milk was full fat and the ‘cream’ was noticeable in floating to the…
An interesting paper
These results show that shooting has a greater non-lethal effect on crows than trapping. While trapping may be a more efficient way of removing crows than shooting, shooting not only reduces the number of nuisance animals directly, but also affects their behaviour and habitat use so that damage is reduced indirectly. https://bioone.org/journals/Ornithological-Science/volume-19/issue-2/osj.19.125/Alert-and-Flight-Initiation-Distances-of-Crows-in-Relation-to/10.2326/osj.19.125.short
Pallids in Pas-de-Calais
I’m interested in Pallid Harriers for a number of reasons; they are very beautiful birds, they are expanding their range dramatically westwards in an interesting manner and I have a bet with my friend Ben Koks (which I will be happy to lose) that Pallids aren’t going to have bred in the UK by the…
An interesting paper
This paper is interesting but it draws an odd policy conclusion in the abstract even though not in the discussion. It suggests that high levels of generalist predators may be a problem for ground-nesting birds in particular (not earth-shattering) but then in the abstract says ‘If we value our ground‐nesting bird species, consideration needs to…
Swifts – counting the days
I’ve seen Swifts on an unbroken run of 84 days this year since 1 May (and on one early date of 19 April). All of those days, bar one last week when we were away in Scotland, were in the skies above our home. I am pretty sure that this has been a very good…
Pallid Harriers breed in Czech Republic for first time
Pallid Harriers bred in the Czech Republic for the first time this year – raising three young. This doesn’t sound as close to the UK as the Netherlands (bred in 2017 and 2019) or Spain (bred 2019) but the number of outlier breeding records grows all the time. I assume there is no breeding pair…
July British Birds
Prof Andrew Barker of the Lothian and Borders Raptor Study Group sounds like a bright guy. His whole-page letter in BB hits several nails on their heads. In particular his long experience of chatting to grouse shooting interests lead him, as mine leads me, to the view that attempts at conciliation with grouse shooting interests…
We’re all ageing…
We’re all ageing but in birders’ parlance this word often means working out the age of a bird (often from details of its plumage). And sexing means telling the sex of a bird likewise (whatever else you may have thought). When British Birds arrived at my swanky house this week, as well as an excellent…