Lancashire Wildlife Blogs

I offer no apologies for the photographs in this post. They should be shared far and wide, mostly to our representatives in the EU and the UK. The slaughter of birds for amusement continues apace in many countries in Europe. It is commonplace in S…

Surfing as one might on a rather dull morning and on the website of Fylde Bird Club, Lancashire, I stumbled across a page full of their old Newsletters. The newsletters, now in PDF form and dated from 1983 to 2017 provide a source of historic local in…

Andy and I arranged to meet up at Gulf Lane this morning to test our latest theory about Linnets – we catch better on frosty mornings? There was a ground frost and a temperature of -1° at 0800. We had been here on Saturday 4th January and despite …

Here I am on a miserable Sunday afternoon, mizzly, dank and grey with nothing on the telly, just the usual BBC propaganda, Sly News or tired old films. I got to thinking about the birding terminology, names and acronyms used in the world of birds …

…… and somewhere to go. After the news on New Year’s Eve that Linnet AYD5167 had been ringed on North Ronaldsay Orkney it didn’t need much persuasion to get out ringing again. Even better, the forecast promised near zero wind and a bright morning th…

Wow. We had had a great result from the Linnet mentioned on here a day or two ago. As suspected, ring number AYD5167 that Andy and I caught at Gulf Lane on 24th December had been ringed in Scotland. Better still, the Linnet location on 8th S…

Andy and I met up again on Thursday morning for another crack at the Linnets. The Linnets didn’t want to play ball and it could be that many or most of the 300 present were the same as on 24th December and would not be captured twice. So we caugh…

With so much wind and rain in recent weeks there’s been little chance of getting to Gulf Lane. This is highly frustrating, even embarrassing, when a recent count realised 280+ Linnets on site compared to our miserly catch of just 30 birds for the whole…

We don’t ring too many Fieldfares but on Friday came news of a Fieldfare that Andy and I ringed up at Oakenclough, Lancashire on the morning of 1st November 2017.“The morning followed the same pattern as the last two occasions here. There was a da…

Friday. There was a frosty outlook and a cold south-easterly and I was ready for a spot of fresh air birding. Once again a hunting Barn Owl stole the morning headlines as it put on a short display over Stalmine Moss. Soon it was gone, back to roos…