BTO thrushes coloured in my local picture

I went out over the Christmas period to count thrushes for the BTO. The winter thrush survey hasn’t really caught my imagination, and I don’t hold great hopes for it producing fascinating results, but the BTO asked me to do it and so I did it gladly. It wasn’t onerous –  a bit of countryside…

Sublime

I failed completely in January and March but I hit the target in February and April. On Friday evening I visited Glapthorn Cow Pasture for my annual search for nightingales.  They are pretty reliable, and there had been one reported a couple of days before, so although it was at the early end of arrival…

BTO Winter Thrush Survey

Last week I did my Big Society thing for the BTO winter thrush survey.  There was a spell of what we will have to call fine weather in the morning and I was out looking for blackbirds, song thrushes, mistle thrushes, redwings and fieldfares, and indeed waxwings and starlings, and indeed anything else that might…

It might be spring

My last two visits to Stanwick Lakes have been very spring-like, even if they were both in late February. Reed buntings were singing, if you can call that a song, everywhere, and skylarks, song thrushes and dunnocks were belting out their songs too.  I heard Cetti’s warblers for the first time in quite a while….