Category: Uncategorized
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The Year In Review
As I meander between classic bird blog territory and other stuff today it’s back to the former. It was a memorable year for me and I’m certainly not complaining. Here’s my top ten chronologically: February half-term With lockdowns and work there wasn’t much chance to get out in earnest before this. Some nice birding Over…
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Blue Is The Colour
Jane and I had a brief amble at Ormsgill Reservoir during my Barrow birthday bash yesterday. The Mute Swans were almost all obligingly lined up along the railway embankment side and I looked through them for the bird from Yorkshire sporting a yellow Darvic ring which has been here for several months. There was no…
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Happy Birthday To Me
I am away for my birthday so I’ve scheduled this, which means it probably won’t work but we’ll see. In terms of birding on my birthday the only thing I can ever remember finding was a Snow Bunting on the shore at Askam-in-Furness when I was a teenager. I didn’t even have my binoculars with…
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Creative Writing – Eyes To The Skies
Yesterday I promised to share some creative writing based on another morning Jane and I spent at Rossall Beach in the spring. You can see it here: https://www.blackpoolsocial.club/32412-coast-bird-migration/ In case that doesn’t work for anyone the text is reproduced below.
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Bad Seawatching
Jane wanted to look for seaglass this morning, so we ‘killed two birds with one stone’ and I did an hour seawatching from Rossall Promenade car park whilst she combed the beach below the tideline. The basic test of successful seawatching is managing to look at the sea. In this regard I was a failure.…
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Grazing Gazing
Between junior parkrun and my parents coming round I only had an hour or so for birding today. I decided to look for Pinkfeet in the Singleton / Windy Harbour area, where I had seen some in passing yesterday. There were perhaps 1500 or so in a field so I parked carefully off road and…
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December 25th
Here is what I’ve received for Christmas from family nature writing wise. I’m putting it on here to make sure that I read them all and do some kind of review in due course. If you’ve been checking in regularly you will know that I received Vagrancy In Birds early, and you can see a…
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Cliche Corner
It would be perverse to twitch a bird as rare and iconic as Belted Kingfisher is in Britain and blog on Christmas Eve about something else. It is also difficult to say anything that hasn’t already been said. So what follows is knowingly cliched. Twitching Gets You To New Places I’ve never been to Roach…
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North Pole And Twitcher Tantrums
I was dropping Jane off in North Shore at lunchtime so stopped at the go-kart track to try and get pictures of the two Purple Sandpipers that roost here with Turnstones. The waders were not playing ball, hanging out on the inaccessible track wall nearest the sea. I thought I could see one ‘Purp’ but…
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Vagrancy In Birds – A Review
My eldest daughter kindly bought me Vagrancy In Birds as a Christmas present. She is abroad over the festive period, so we exchanged and opened gifts at the weekend As I’ve opened it I’ve not stood on ceremony and read it, so Santa may disapprove but I can at least assure you this isn’t a…
Natural Selection 