Despite the cold weather, bird migration is in full swing. Millions of birds have started moving from their wintering grounds in Africa, stopping over in the cold tundra of Eurasia. At this time of the year, Turau Meadow in Belarus becomes a paradise for nature lovers – as many as 150,000 Eurasian Wigeon Mareca Penelope […]
Tag: Snipe
Foreign visitors to the Algarve
Yesterday we took our day off and replaced the steppes of Alentejo with the saltmarshes, beaches and lagoons of the Algarve. It was a long and brilliant day, packed with quality stuff. We left very early to arrive at our first site, Salinas do Forte do Rato in Tavira in good time. It was pretty […]
Seminole Ranch Conservation Area, 12/23/2016
This morning I drove to the Seminole Ranch Conservation Area. The parking area for it is right across the street from Orlando Wetlands Park. If there’s no hunt planned for the day, you can get there as early as you like and walk to the St. John’s River. The trail takes you to the St. […]
Western Swamp Hen in the Bank
So having dipped the Western Swamphen the day it left Minsmere I’ve been watching it during it’s stay at Alkborough Flats in Lincolnshire. As I’ve stated before I have this soft self imposed two hour twitch rule and with Swampy now 200 miles from home I’d need to break that rule if I wanted to […]
Red List reveals Europe’s farmland wading birds in crisis
The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is out – and it’s sounding alarm bells for some of Europe’s most charismatic and cherished shorebirds (also known as wading birds). The list highlights sharp declines in most farmland wader species across much of Europe in recent decades. In some cases, these falls […]
Why we should learn birdsong alongside French and German?
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 […]
13 newly-discovered birds declared extinct
In a recent update of the IUCN Red List, scientists have identified 13 new bird species that have gone extinct since 1500. In total the list now finds that at least 140 bird species gone extinct in the past five hundred years, representing 1.3 percent of the world’s total known birds. The new extinct birds […]
Alarming disappearances among our familiar countryside birds
The latestState of the UK’s Birdsreport, published today, reveals many of our most familiar countryside birds are undergoing sweeping changes with some experiencing ‘plummeting population declines’, compared with the 1990s. It is now known that in some parts of the UK these birds have disappeared completely. A section of the report looks at the UK’s […]