Category: VERY BIRDY: birdwatching and birding nattering

This bird’s song is sublimely evocative for me. Hearing it, anywhere, even sitting here at my computer, takes me immediately back to the Welsh oakwood on the RSPB Dinas nature reserve. Yes there are Redstarts, Pied Flycatchers, Tree Pipits there but the song of the Wood Warbler is wonderful. And the bird, if you can…

My lockdown garden bird list has leapt from 46 to 53 species in the last three weeks. The ‘new’ species were Cuckoo, Hobby and Sand Martin (summer migrants) and Mallard, Little Egret, Herring Gull and Skylark. Little Egret was a garden lifer too – but now I’ve seen it three times. Here’s the list (with…

Cranes are now rare breeding birds in the UK having established small populations in East Anglia, the Somerset Levels, Humberside and some parts of Scotland. What amazing birds they are, and they make amazing noises too. Here are some Cranes singing to each other. These are not UK recordings but if you were very lucky…

Congratulations to Emma Claxton Russell whose entry to this blog’s Lockdown Nature-writing challenge was voted as your favourite (by a clear margin). There were over 40 entries submitted and I chose a shortlist of a dozen. There were 219 votes cast and Emma’s writing gained 41 of those votes. Congratulations to her! I’ll be sending…

I think of Nightjars as being birds of southern England but they are actually quite widely found in the UK including parts of Wales, northern England and southern Scotland. But I first heard them on the Somerset Levels in my youth and my strongest memories of them are on heathlands in Dorset, Hampshire, Norfolk and…

Much more often heard, often at night, than seen, the Corncrake was once found in every county in Britain and Ireland – that’s about 150 years ago. But it made the mistakes of nesting in grasslands and needing to produce lots of young every year to survive. Corncrakes are short-lived – only 25-30% of adults…

Skylarks have wonderful songs but so do Woodlarks. Both have tuneful songs but they are very different so you won’t get them mixed up with each other, nor, really, with anything else. Woodlarks often, but not always, sing on the wing but instead of the Skylark’s normal hovering flight Woodlarks are always on the move,…

Wildlife from my Window I bought it from the pound shop. I really didn’t think it would work, but for a quid, I was willing to try. I stuck the small, clear-plastic bird feeder on the window on New Year’s Day and waited. The seed clumped together, it had to be emptied, washed and refilled…

Tomorrow is International Dawn Chorus Day. Read Chris Baines’s guest blog about how this all started. Sunrise is about 5:20am but it gets light before then and birds start singing before it gets light. But the forecast is fine so I’ll set the alarm for 4:30am and step outside for half an hour or so….