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…
Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering
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…
Guest blog – Tracking Robins in the Soundscape by Murray Marr
I’ve been measuring the seasonal vocal outputs of various songbirds on Midhurst Common’s woodlands in West Sussex, since 2003. This was when, on a whim, part of a regular dog walk started to include ten minutes of counting of singing individuals of each species within a series of short time frames. I do this simple,…
Those Birdtrack House Sparrows revisited
You may think that I have a ‘thing’ about this, maybe an unhealthy obsession, but it’s just something that interests me. I noticed that the reporting rates of many birds on the excellent Birdtrack system had changed during lockdown, and in predictable ways. Birdtrack was telling us about our behaviour as birders as much as…
Heading to autumn
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If Spring ends on 19 May, as I think it does for me, then Summer is about to morph into Autumn. I know there is the whole of July and August that many people would regard as Summer, but the birds are telling me that Autumn is fast approaching. Sitting in my garden the other…
It might be you, or me, but actually it’s Mairi.
I’ve been checking my garden, and the local patches of open space with grass, to see whether amongst all the Starlings and their noisy hungry young, there might be a Rose-coloured Starling (aka Rosy Pastor). And so it was with some envy that I received this photo of two Rose-coloured Starlings in my inbox from…
Vulture flights
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Check out the Saving Asia’a Vultures from Extinction website for information on the movements of released captive-bred and captive -reared White-rumped Vultures from Nepal, how COVID-19 is affecting fieldwork and the discovery of a breeding colony of White-rumped Vultures in Laos.