Natural Selection

My copy of Birdwatch arrived a couple of days ago, and I opened it tonight. On the inside cover where there used to be a kind of ‘And Finally’ light relief article was a piece on Ruddy Duck culls. Back in the day this slot would have featured some light humour from Bill Oddie. For…

We’ll come back to the Gerald the Gorilla reference. A Greenland White-fronted Goose was found at Myerscough Quarry a couple of weeks ago by Ash Baines with a group of Eurasian Whitefronts. The latter have long since departed, but the Greenland bird has hung around and as it’s a site I cover quite regularly, and…

Whilst up in Barrow today for the football I visited a number of birding sites. I have been passing up chances to go for the long staying Red Necked Grebe at Cavendish Dock, and as the weather was set fair decided to give it a go. It was also a chance visit old stamping grounds.…

I went to Little Singleton after work tonight and had a pleasant half hour watching Pinkfeet in the sun. They were spooked by a plane at one point, when I took the picture above. Hopefully it conveys some of the spectacle. I think I will miss the wild geese when they’ve gone more acutely this…

Swans and serenity are synonymous. They are generally thought to mate for life, and widely regarded as calm and peaceful birds. The truth can be rather more graphic, with fights to the death, incest and even infanticide. By those standards the family disputes I witnessed at Kincraig Lake on Sunday morning were quite tame. Mute…

I nearly called this post Great Snipes as a not particularly original pun. I didn’t because I’ve never seen a Great Snipe, it isn’t about that species and I didn’t want to draw people in under false pretences. It’s more a case of small ‘g’ and small ‘s’ as I return to the psychology of…

Given the storms yesterday I was geared up for looking for seabirds at Crosby before the news of the Snow Goose broke. I checked Crosby Marina late morning and seawatched briefly a little further north. I was hoping for Little Gulls, and if I had stuck at it may have been rewarded as a couple…

I had a day’s birding in the Liverpool area planned today as we were in the city for Jane to attend a seaglass course. Whilst I was at Crosby Marina news came through that the wintering Snow Goose had been relocated at Birkdale Cop, not too far away. So I decided to shelve plans and…

I’ve read ‘Wintering’ previously but I have come back to it this week. Taking Jane to work in the mornings there have been Greylags and several hundred Pinkfeet in the roadside fields on different days. On Tuesday we were on the Solway and I saw thousands of Barnacle Geese stretched in a ribbon across Rockcliffe…

When I was studying at Lancaster University I got involved with winter wildfowl surveys on the River Lune. For several years I walked upriver from the town centre to the picturesque Crook O’Lune and back. It was a lovely walk and there was enough birdlife to keep it interesting. On a couple of occasions I…