With the recent passage of a bill that gained unanimous support in the House of Lords, England has joined a handful of countries and a host of companies and institutions around the world that have banned glue traps. For mice and rats, the traps’ primary targets, who are so often excluded from society’s moral reckoning […]
Tag: Swift
Great Spotted Cuckoo at Wheeler’s Bay
On 21st March news filtered through of a Great Spotted Cuckoo at Wheeler’s Bay, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. Initially details were fairly sketchy but the following day news broke of its continued presence and pictures eventually emerged on Twitter and Facebook, as is the way of todays birding world. This was the second record for […]
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 […]
Brazil Ubatuba Day #7 – Tanagers Galore
Today’s birding in the Atlantic Forest of Ubatuba was really about brilliance. We could not have our breakfast quietly, nor leave the lodge on time, because of tanager et al. action on the bananas. Green-headed Tanager is truly spectacular Brazilian Tanager is so brilliant red it hurts the eye Blue Dacnis are uber-pretty too. Here’s […]
Quiet morning at Minsmere
At the crack of dawn we’re walking the north bushes at Minsmere only to find a few Brambling and a Bullfinch for our effort. An Otter and four Red Deer showed as we walked the north wall and lot’s of Beardies pinged all around but despite the calm didn’t show that well. On the wader […]
Another Harns Marsh Preserve Fail
Having missed the Everglade Snail Kite at Harns Marsh Preserve last week, I was compelled to make a follow up trip on 26 July to attempt to observe the species. I was much more observant to find Apple Snail eggs as well. The clutch of eggs above I questimate to contain 500, well within the […]
Tree Swallows
Tree swallows spend most of their day flying in pursuit of small aerial insects, gliding swiftly through the air and twisting and turning artistically as their blue feathers flash in the sunlight. This haiku written in 1818 by Issa, one of Japan’s foremost poets, recognizes the aerial exploits of swallow-kind: Gliding through the cloudburst so […]
Swifts migrate from Beijing to southern Africa without landing
Swifts born in Beijing’s old imperial palaces travel 16,000 miles every year to southern Africa and back again without touching ground, and over a lifetime clock up enough miles to get halfway to the moon. New research suggests that after they leave their nests for the first time, the birds spend up to three years […]