Natural Selection

I had flu late Monday and through yesterday, as it got worse I was in bed all day Tuesday. I couldn’t sleep during the night, and when I was finally fit enough to get out and about it was dark again. But it wasn’t a complete loss in terms of appreciating the birds of the…

Today’s main nature time was spent at Heysham for a gathering of Marinelife surveyors. Heysham is a familiar venue for Marinelife, as in normal times three routes are used for our work (to Belfast, Dublin and Warrenpoint). Today we were admiring the vessels from afar, hopefully it won’t be too long before we can get…

Walking down Cheapside, central Blackpool towards the office today I heard a Grey Wagtail ‘chipping’ overhead. It landed on the roof of the clothes shop pictured above, and promptly started singing. By the time I had the phone set it moved out of view, so yes I am offering you a picture of the less…

I dropped Jane at the gym this morning so headed for Little Singleton as usual on a Wednesday now. The Pinkfeet were still around in numbers, but in amongst the saltmarsh and not easily viewed until something spooked them when I took the shot above. Mammals were the highlight of the visit. A couple of…

I was successful in a competition run by the North East Scotland Bird Club last week, and the prizes arrived today. As well as a couple of North East Scotland Bird Reports there is a splendid calendar by Ron Macdonald and a couple of his greeting cards with images of Blackcap and Golden Plovers. I’ve…

I’ve looked at a lot of Pink-footed Geese today. First up was a flock of around 600 birds by the main road at Hamilton. These were fairly close and settled as the picture below hopefully conveys. Then via Pilling and Conder Green onwards to the Goose Watch at Aldcliffe. There were decent flocks both on…

This blog was supposed to be about my creative writing, but generally functions as a birding diary. Today I was on a Lancashire Litfest nature writing workshop with Anita Sethi and a number of amateur writers, so it seemed a good day to redress the balance a bit. Anita wrote a book ‘I Belong Here’…

I was back at Little Singleton before work this morning. Again I struggled to find many geese, initially I could see only three Pinkfeet, but as more joined them on the sandbanks it became clear there were hundreds in the saltmarsh. V35 from Svalbard was present for at least its third day. The white neck…

An early jaunt before work to see if the geese were still at Little Singleton. They were, but a lot of them were out of view behind hedges bordering the pasture they were feeding in. The Svalbard collared bird was still in the flock. There was also a lone Greylag in with the Pink-feet, see…

I dropped Jane at her early gym class this morning, and for the first time it was light enough to do some birding rather than go home and wait. I headed for Skippool, where the many yachts in various states of repair and disrepair always look good on a sunny spring morning. There wasn’t a…