We have now lost two months of ringing with a corresponding loss of two months of data collection. Bird ringers confined to barracks have not caught other ringers’ birds and ringers have been unable to catch birds previously ringed by others. Many…
Recent mornings saw overcast skies, cold winds and very little sunshine. Such mornings are not ideal for a visit to the Pennine hills with a camera itching to click. I pencilled in Wednesday for an early start and then watched as the forecasts did th…
There’s good news. Ringers in England may go ringing again subject to following the constraints which apply to the public as a whole. It’s bad luck for ringers who live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, whose devolved governments have taken a t…
On Wednesday morning the windscreen wipers dragged across the screen and the dash warned of 3°C and a chance of ice. I set off regardless for my morning walk because that frosty start would mean sun and lots of it. Flushed with Monday’s succes…
May 3rd with once again a zero count of House Martins over the weekend, not even a fly by as often happens when early arrivals stop off and examine last year’s breeding sites under the neighbours’ eaves. The lack of martins is very noticeable because…
The country continues to survive under house arrest, with any visits into the open air shrouded under a haze of paranoia about being caught, dobbed in and/or fined. I see that even the twitchers, and at the height of rarity May, have somewhat reluctan…
We count ourselves fortunate that we live in Stalmine, a village less than a mile from the partly tidal River Wyre. A walk along country lanes leads directly to the Wyre salt marshes with paths that head north inland to Eccleston or south to the mouth…
Even at ten o’clock this morning the sun was pretty hot. I cut the grass back and front then settled down for a while to read a few chapters from one of my favourite ever bird books – Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin.I first reviewed …
Today we heard from TUI. Our holiday to Skiathos in May is officially cancelled. The good people of Skiathos and Greece as a whole suffer yet again after the Thomas Cook fiasco of 2019. With luck we will be able re-book our holiday for May …
For today’s post I reproduce a beautifully written piece about the House Sparrow. The article first appeared in The Irish Times in March 2001. So insightful and relevant is the piece still, and so little has changed, that it could have been penned ju…