In the UK, throughout the autumn and winter, very high tides in the Wash give rise to one of natures’ wildlife spectacles. The Wash is a large rectangular bay on the East coast of England. Sometimes it’s referred to as the ‘Snettisham Spectacular’ or ‘ Wader Spectacular’. Undoubtable the best place to witness this is […]
Tag: golden plover
Maridalen Mandarin
Yesterday, Rune and I “did” Nordre Øyeren and Aurskog-Høland. Birding was good although it was a great disappointment that the flodd waters at Kjelle have so rapidly declined and with no rain forecast for at least the next week they will disappear very soon. It was dry everywhere and Lapwings were concentrated around the last […]
POLL: Should Malta be allowed to trap and slaughter migratory birds?
Within a day of arriving on the Mediterranean island of Malta on their southbound migration last August, three of 18 white storks were shot and killed by poachers. Less than two weeks later, just one of the birds was left alive. By Aug. 29, 19 days since the flock arrived, all of the birds had […]
Bitterns, curlews and lapwings at risk as vital wildlife funds dry up
They are some of the most elusive birds to nest in the UK. Indeed, they hide so well in their reedbed homes that ornithologists can only estimate bittern numbers by counting the sources of the booming sounds made by males in summer. It is a census that has produced alarming results. Only 11 booming bitterns […]
November and Early December
Well, November seems to have passed me by without seeing a single bird of any note while much of the UK seemed to be awash with rare Swift’s. I have barely managed to get out due to work commitments and a general low ebb in my birding enthusiasm, this comes to me once in a […]
Titchwell all to ourselves
We left home at 4am Saturday and arrived in the car park at Titchwell two hours later. The place was empty and we enjoyed a good hour or so before anybody else arrived. A quick scan into the rising sun failed to find the Lesser Yellowlegs so I continued to the beach which was again […]
Pennington Marsh – 23rd March
With a couple of hours to spare after dropping Tobias at school I had a wander around Pennington Marsh taking in Jetty, Butts, Fishtail and Keyhaven Lagoons. It was a bright spring like day but with a strong NW wind it was deceptively cold. Numbers of wader and wildfowl had shown a noticeable and decrease […]
Pennington Marsh – 5th and 9th March
I visited Pennington Marsh on 5th and 9th March and on both days saw much the same. Its a pretty static time of year with winter birds steadily but barely noticeably declining and very few migrants appearing. The Lapwing are now in regular display and are busy making nesting scrapes on the marsh while Black-tailed […]