Natural Selection

Apologies if all my readership know this but imprinting is an important part of the formative days and weeks of many young birds. If a chick accidentally gets detached from its brood in certain circumstances it can get the wrong idea about its parents. In zoos and other collections if care isn’t taken birds can…

I went through the gulls on the Leven Estuary at Greenodd both on the way to the Barrow game and on the way back. Second helpings was worthwhile as I had a couple of ringed Lesser Black-backed Gulls after little on the way in. I will hopefully remember to post the details of youngster N:W18…

What’s up the Walrus on a card in my home office asks. Well in the Walrus world what’s up is probably climate change, but this has been temporarily supplanted by the killing of a female named Freya in Oslo harbour this weekend. Freya had developed something of a following as she wandered round the North…

Those with long memories will recall this blog is supposed to include my own creative writing, and reviews of the writing of others as well as birding write ups. Part of the reason for the paucity of book reviews is it has taken me a while to plough through nearly 500 pages of this weighty…

I was in two minds whether to go out in the time between finishing work and the football tonight. This was not least because the tide wasn’t great for the sites I would normally go in a short gap, Skippool and Little Singleton. I went to the latter anyway, and was glad I did. Greylags…

The last couple of evenings I’ve been down at Lytham Jetty birding the Ribble Estuary. I laid to rest the Spoonbill dip of last week, both nights half a dozen were doing what Spoonbills do as in very little most of the time. They were also on the other side of the river both days…

In the absence of much creative writing I guess this blog has four main foundations – Blackpool, Cumbria, Shetland and Book Reviews. As I gave a shameless plug for the Fylde Bird Club the other day I am doing the same for the Cumbria Bird Club on this occasion. At the club’s Council meeting last…

On Sunday I had been busy all day before having a free hand whilst Jane was at the theatre. I knew Skippool had been covered, and I quite fancied seeing one of more of the Spoonbills on the Ribble estuary. The Spoonbills have only been seen from Freckleton Naze and Lytham Quays, so with flawless…

I was in Dalton today visiting my parents. A Barrow extension to this trip saw me watch the soccer team lose a friendly in the rain, and my completion of the monthly wetland bird survey for Ormsgill Reservoir. There were a few Greylag and Canada Geese on the rezza, and today I am writing about…

In my write up of the Black-necked Grebe earlier in the week I said something like ‘hopefully there will be better pictures’. Well there were, and I’ve borrowed a couple taken by Paul Ellis on the Fylde Bird Club webpage to share with you. It might seem a bit lacksadaisical but I assumed it was…