This is an image of Raunds; the rural town where I have lived for half my life. In passing, you can see Stanwick Lakes, my local birdwatching patch, to the west of the A45, at the left hand side of the image. And the B663 is the road by which I left home to head…
Tag: Stanwick Lakes
Wings Across the Atlantic
This is my latest book: Wings Across the Atlantic: a year in the life of two old birders. About Wings Across the Atlantic It is essentially a re-run of the book, Birds of a Feather by Colin Rees and Derek Thomas (see my review – click here) 11 years later with Colin based in Maryland,…
Sunday book review – The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit by Richard K. Broughton
There was a time, a few decades ago, when the most difficult thing about Marsh and Willow Tits was to know which of these two very similar species one was seeing (the calls are much easier) but now the main difficulty is seeing either of them at all. The identification features are now better known…
Bird flu through the years
Comments Off on Bird flu through the years
The lists below tell you something of the progression of bird flu in wild birds in the UK since the winter of 2016/17. The data come from Defra – click here. You are able, and very welcome, to re-do this little analysis and see for yourself. I expect my version has a few errors in…
Sunday book review – The Green Woodpecker by Gerard Gorman
Comments Off on Sunday book review – The Green Woodpecker by Gerard Gorman
I like Green Woodpeckers, I always have, and was keen to find out more about them from the pen (keyboard I guess) of an acknowledged world woodpecker expert (see here for a review of the same author’s Wryneck). The book comprises 17 chapters which run from the taxonomy of the species through its anatomy, morphology,…
Bird flu update
Comments Off on Bird flu update
Did you hear Katie-jo Luxton on BBC Radio 4 Today on Monday morning? Worth a listen and well done to Today for continuing to feature news (all of it bad) about bird flu in the absence of Defra saying much about what’s happening (click here at 08:45am, near the end of the programme). I was…
My lowish-carbon birding – the UK
Comments Off on My lowish-carbon birding – the UK
Reading and reviewing (click here) the new book, Low -carbon birding, and particularly the contribution from Nick Moran, made me review my Birdtrack records to reflect on my travel as a birder in the UK. Birdtrack (click here) is a way of keeping your bird sightings in one place where they can be reviewed and…
Book review: Low-carbon Birding by Javier Caletrio
This is a welcome book, dealing, as it does, with an important issue for those of us who are birders. The structure of the book is that the editor produces two introductory chapters on the issue of climate change and the contribution of travel as it applies to birdwatching in its widest sense, and…
Local patch
I spent a couple of hours at my local patch of Stanwick Lakes this morning. I was hoping to catch up with some more spring migrants as Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Swallow and Little Ringed Plover are more or less it for me so far. It was a sunny but cool morning. As we neared the site…
A letter to my MP
Dear Mr Pursglove, I’d like to bring to your attention the recent remarks of one of your fellow Conservative MPs, Chris Loder. When a White-tailed Eagle was found dead, suspected poisoned, in his Dorset constituency, Mr Loder went onto social media to say that he didn’t want eagles in his constituency, that they didn’t belong…