Natural Selection

After volunteering at Blackpool parkrun yesterday I was due to be in Fairhaven for a ramble, but with some time to kill first. So I decided to stop by the waste transfer station at Mereside and go through the gulls on the roof. Rock and roll eh… If your first thought on reading that was…

I do like a good Big Year book. I’ve read at least five other books on the subject*. This one had received some very good reviews so I didn’t think the focus on the state of Louisiana would be a problem. Marybeth Lima is a professor who has written several non-birding books. This overcomes the…

I am making a rare visit these days to Blackpool parkrun tomorrow. So I decided to post about some of the birds I have seen whilst volunteering at parkrun, not least because the stand out highlight was at Blackpool. I got involved with Blackpool parkrun soon after it started. When Fleetwood Promenade started I joined…

I don’t have much time to look for birds at the moment. I’ve been nipping to Singleton and Little Singleton and hoping for geese, and I’ve been quite lucky really. Today there were a couple of thousand or so Pinkfeet at the end of Occupation Lane, though they were very skittish due to disturbance from…

I had a quick look at Stanley Park lake today, before an exercise class at the sports centre. The lake is still closed off following the avian influenza outbreak, but it is expected it will be reopened soon now the worst has passed. It’s very sobering that the swan death toll was today reported to…

One of my regular haunts is the upper reaches of the Wyre estuary at Little Singleton. It doesn’t get the birds of the better known Skippool Creek area to the north west, but it’s relatively easy to get to and has its charms. The standard fare of the Wyre on this stretch is wildfowl, waders…

On my way to the survey in SD55 yesterday I had seen a decent flock of Pinkfeet by the A585 at Singleton. I had a look through them on the way there and on the return journey, but couldn’t pick anything out. So this lunchtime I had a quick run out in the hope they…

For the last few years I have helped in a winter bird survey covering the Lancaster district. When I started I did the whole of the SD55 10 kilometre square. East of the M6 this includes a few fishing lakes, the villages of Abbeystead and Dolphinholme and heather upland moors. These days Rob Foster covers…

You know it’s bad weather in Fleetwood when the Nature Park is empty on your arrival. Normally there are plenty of dog walker’s cars. I took advantage of the conditions and lack of canine footfall on the bridge to get some ‘ducks in rain’ pictures. Without wishing to be anthropomorphic the regular drake Shoveler didn’t…

Recently I have been musing on what constitutes a dream find for a birder. This was partly prompted by David Roche discovering a Varied Thrush on Orkney, and a light-hearted suggestion on Twitter that he had ‘completed birding’. Finding rare birds will always be a mixture of luck, persistence and skill. Logically you might expect…