Natural Selection

On the back of a quiet trips in 2009 I decided to go in the peak of the autumn season. I was staying at Hillside Cottage by the airstrip. The regular crew of Mike McKee, Chris Turner, Marek Walford and Trevor Warwick were at Rocklea. We travelled out in atrocious conditions where the swell was…

The title is a nod to the Classic Days series from the journal British Birds a number of years ago. Coincidentally the 1989 compilation of these stories of great birding experiences includes one by David Fisher from Out Skerries in August 1975. I’ve never day tripped the islands like Shetland birders do, so I’m going…

Before I go on to some ‘great stays with Skerries birds’ type of posts I am going to reflect on some of the changes on the isles in the fifteen years I have been visiting. I know this isn’t really nature writing, so apologies to those who come here for that content but hopefully it…

Second home may be pushing it a bit, but every year since 2007 I’ve spent some time on Out Skerries in Shetland. I will be there in a couple of weeks for a few days, if the internet is up to it I will blog about it but I suspect it won’t be so I…

You’d think with the war in Ukraine, price increases and so on there would be plenty to report on. Sometimes admittedly it can be difficult to find a local angle on current affairs. There’s really no excuse however for the Lancashire Evening Post suggesting that an endangered Mauritius Pink Pigeon had probably been spotted in…

At lunchtime today I had a very quick check of Devonshire Rock Gardens and North Shore golf course. There is a public footpath that crosses the course, and whilst you can’t linger it’s worth a fast paced look. I’ve had a couple of Hooded Crow together in the past, a Chough that wandered the Fylde…

The love life of zoo animals isn’t normally of great interest to me, but as I was in Dalton yesterday I decided to check on the report that the free flying storks were nesting. Sure enough a pair could be seen from the A590. The image above is through my telescope. I don’t know how…

Today kicks off what birders often refer to as the magic month of May. It’s so named because it’s one of the best times for finding and seeing birds that are passing through. I had a junior parkrun to oversee and a work social walk to attend so whilst I would love to have seen…

At this time of year a number of Lancashire sites both coastal and inland are key staging posts for Whimbrel, a migratory cousin of the more widely known and similar Curlew. For a number of years a couple of coordinated counts have been done about a week apart at these spring roost sites to monitor…

Whilst I was up in Barrow yesterday I saw a number of posts on social media as people received their Shetland Bird Reports through the letter box. It’s always a joy to read this so I hoped mine had arrived, and it had. In one sense it’s obviously an easy sell to make the Shetland…