Tag: Tim Melling

Tim writes: Skylarks inhabit a variety of grasslands from sand dunes to grassy moorlands but they were most characteristic of arable farmland.  But from the late 1970s their numbers started to tumble when we switched from spring-sown to autumn-sown crops.  This hit Skylarks in several ways, not least by removing their winter stubble feeding habitat. …

  Tim writes:  Common Sandpipers are quite unusual among British waders as they are almost entirely summer breeding visitors from sub-Saharan Africa.  Most of Britain’s wading birds are winter visitors although quite a few also breed in Britain. The “kitty-needy-kitty-needy” flight call of the Common Sandpiper heralds the arrival of spring close to where I…

Tim writes:  I think this is the first time I have managed to capture the eye detail in a Buzzard, which is especially good as he’s looking right down at me.   Their plumage is variable and this is quite a pale individual, and identifiable as an adult by the thick, dark trailing edge to the…

  Tim writes: Photographs of Red Pandas in the wild are so rare I have decided to post a second photograph.  This one was high in a Berry tree, realising it was a little exposed as they normally feed on bamboo, so spend their time deep in bamboo thickets.  They venture out in the autumn,…

  Tim writes: to British birdwatchers this will look like the result of a unnatural union between a Robin and a Dunnock.  But this is actually a high altitude Himalayan Dunnock relative known as a Robin Accentor (Prunella rubeculoides), whose scientific name translates as Dunnock, like a Robin.  It looked and behaved just like a…

  Tim writes: the Collared Crow used to be common over large areas of lowland, rural China, just creeping into Vietnam.  But its numbers have tumbled over the past 15 years and is now only found commonly in a few areas in its former range.  Places that used to support hundreds of birds are now…

Tim writes: the Golden Takin is a rare mammal that inhabits the same mountainous bamboo thicket forests as Giant Panda.  There are four subspecies and this is the form that lives in Sichuan  (Budorcas taxicolor tibetana) with more blotchy flanks than the true Golden Takin (B.t.bedfordi) from Shaanxi, NW China.  The remaining two subspecies are…

Tim writes: Photo-opportunities of perched Merlins are few and far between.  So I could hardly believe my luck when I spotted one on a roadside post some distance ahead.  I took a few record shots then inched closer in the car until it was only about 25m away.  It then turned its head and made…

  Tim writes: Well I normally like to isolate my photographic subjects but this perch wasn’t quite what I had in mind for my first Siberian Meadow Bunting (Emberiza cioides), which is usually now known simply as Meadow Bunting.  I have long been fascinated by this species which was illustrated in Thorburn’s Birds as it…

Tim writes: This will be a familiar bird to anyone who has spent time near a river in SE Asia.  They are noisy, bold, and very photogenic.  They were once placed in a genus (Chaimarrornis) but molecular studies have shown it is definitely a typical redstart, in the same genus as our two  British species. …