Feeding birds is hard-wired into our national psyche. The apocryphal Victorian “tuppence a bag” for seed for the Trafalgar Square pigeons has morphed into a national pastime, with an estimated 17m households spending £250m a year on more than 150,000 tonnes of bird feed – enough to feed the entire breeding population of the 10 […]
Tag: Pied Flycatcher
Turtle dove flies towards extinction as numbers halve in UK
The turtle dove, Britain’s most endangered bird, continues to plummet towards extinction, its numbers having halved over five years, according to the latest data. The turtle dove’s 51% decline from 2013 to 2017 is the most drastic of a continuing slump for a quarter of farmland bird species. However, there are signs of recovery for […]
Pied Flycatcher
A trip to Yarner Wood on Dartmoor at this time of year is always a treat, although on this occasion the weather was a little against us with low temperatures and light rain, though it did brighten up a bit in the afternoon. Pied Flycatchers are one of the main attractions here with nest boxes […]
Wryneck
The winds changed to the south today and whilst that did not bring any immediate changes to the birdlife in Maridalen it might mean that the rain that is forecast to start at 3am tonight might well bring down a lot of migrating birds (ever the optimist). Three flocks of Pink-footed Geese heading north today […]
Sweden Road Trip
Got back last night from a week-long family trip to Sweden. Sweden is a wonderful country. We landed at Västerås and drove from there up north. First night we stayed near Sandvik, second near Bispgården and then we reached our destination – Luleå in the far north of Sweden. Lots of driving…From a family point […]
The Levante winds of Spring – Spain 2017
I lead a tour group from the the US Audubon Naturalist Society in April to southern Spain. We had a great time apart from the awful windy weather. The famous Levante wind just would not stop for almost the whole eight days. We did however have a great time, saw lots of birds and other […]
Rosefinch in apple blossom
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 […]
Climate change driving birds to migrate early, research reveals
Migrating birds are responding to the effects of climate change by arriving at their breeding grounds earlier as global temperatures rise, research has found. The University of Edinburgh study, which looked at hundreds of species across five continents, found that birds are reaching their summer breeding grounds on average about one day earlier per degree […]