The government’s conservation watchdog has issued licences to destroy 170,000 wild birds, eggs and nests, including rare and declining species such as curlews and swifts, in the past five years. Natural England has given permission to kill birds of more than 70 species, or have their nests and eggs destroyed. These include peregrine falcons, barn […]
Tag: Mute Swan
Smew
I really can’t wait for my birding in Rogaland as it is all so grey and gloomy in Oslo just now. At least there was no fog today so it was possible to see what little is around. The two remaining Guillemots were visible on Maridalsvannet today and are clearly finding enough to eat. At […]
Territory battle
Instead of heading up the A12 we headed down the M20 arriving at a very murky Dungeness at first light. We attempted a short seawatch but the mist was a real problem as was the rain and lack of wind. We had a few Auks, Gannets and Sandwich Terns along with a single raft of […]
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 […]
Birding By The Sea
Well, this is not actually a post about birding by the sea, but birding by the Long Island Sound at Hammonasset Beach State Park. Images in this post are from a trip to Hammonasset in mid-January when I met world eBirders Julie Hart and Daniel Schlaepfer with four additional visits in February. Julie was kind […]
Two Winter Specialties At Stratford Point
Stratford Point just off I-95 above the Long Island Sound became host to a Short-eared Owl on 2 January according to eBird data. I closely followed reports of the Short-eared Owl on eBird as I had not observed the species in the wild before. As the owl was seen with regularity I began to study […]
Do Partridges Really Live in Pear Trees?
The lucky recipient in the classic Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” got 23 birds over the course of the holiday season. Hopefully they didn’t live in a studio apartment. In the yuletide spirit, we’re taking a closer look at the birds immortalized in the English folk song, first published around 1780. Seven Swans […]
Pintail on ice
A new day and a new weather system. Overnight rain, clouds and a fresh southerly wind were not the best birding conditions and wasn’t eve sure I would bother but eventually decided that it might be worth checking the sea off Fornebu. Not much to write down in the notebook here except for a few […]