Natural Selection

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…

One of the odd things about bird news is that when it is reported by someone who doesn’t do regular birding they are often referred to as ‘a member of the public’. It makes me wonder what birders are if they aren’t members of the public, some kind of secret society perhaps. Birders are often…

I’m probably being too clever by half with the title, so let me explain. Last Saturday morning there was a Cumbria Bird Club meeting at St Bees, the western outpost of the county. As a Club committee member I wanted to go, but I didn’t feel driving to a birding jaunt so far away was…

I will get round to Foula reflections. I will also write up my green birding jaunt to St Bees at the weekend. I might also do something on my friend Nick’s amazing find of a British bird a long way from home last week. For now though I am getting back into the swing of…

I will get round to some musings about birding Foula in spring, but in the meantime here are some cute Puffin pics.

I am going to do a few posts about my recent Shetland trip, which consisted of a week on Foula and just shy of that on Out Skerries. They will hopefully be uplifting and inspiring generally, but it’s not possible to talk about birding Foula this spring without first addressing the impacts of bird flu.…

There’s probably no more appropriate time to review this book than now. I am rained off in Lerwick at the end of a couple of weeks in Shetland, and spent half an hour this afternoon talking on the street to one contributor (Dennis Coutts) and said hi to another as we crossed the road in…