Its nice sometimes to just stay at home in the backyard and see what birds turn up at my small reflection pool. On this occasion one of the Long Tailed Tits that visit the feeders came down briefly for a drink, as well as the more usual Collared Dove, Goldfinch, House Sparrows, Great Tit and […]
Sarah had brought for me, at Christmas, a photography course with David Tipling and so we all headed up to North Norfolk for the weekend. David is a recent convert from Nikon to Olympus and is now an ambassador for Olympus. The main aim for me was to glean some of his knowledge in using […]
The cold temperatures continue and we awoke to -7C today with blue skies and no wind. A relaxed trip around Maridalen didn’t reveal huge quantities of birds but there was quality there and I had a long overdue patch tick. The lake held a single Guillemot but not the Long-tailed Ducks and Common Scoters that […]
We really don’t have too much snow down here on the Devon/Cornwall border, so a covering of the white stuff was a bit of a novelty on two separate weeks in March. I could have panicked and ran around with my long lens and end up photographing nothing at all or just stay in the […]
Well tomorrow (today) didn’t bring too much for me or anyone else locally. I started early at Huk to see if there was anything on the sea which there wasn’t and then against my better judgement went to look for the King Eider which of course I couldn’t find. After that it was Maridalen where […]
I arrived home the other evening at dusk after a long journey, and stepped out of the car to hear a shouting match between blackbirds, one of the most beautiful sounds in nature. In the still calm of a clear March evening three males were fiercely staking their suburban territories, belting out sweet and flutey […]
Urban great tits have smaller black breast stripes than their rural neighbours, a study has found. Scientists discovered significant differences between birds living in Barcelona, Spain and a nearby forest. Smaller “black ties” appeared to improve male great tits’ survival rates in the city, while in the countryside birds with larger ties fared best. “The […]
Great tits use different alarm calls for different predators, according to a scientist in Japan. The researcher analysed the birds’ calls and found they made “jar” sounds for snakes and “chicka” sounds for crows and martens. This, he says, is the first demonstration birds can communicate vocally about the type of predator threatening them. The […]