Natural Selection

I thought this might be a depressing entry for my 100th blog post, but it turns out that was the more cheery one about House Sparrows. This one visits some other recurring and less positive themes about urban birds. The Gazette ran a story yesterday about the Council shooting some pigeons that were causing issues…

My old works car park was the other side of Blackpool North station from the office. There were some trees on the frontage of the station that often held a few House Sparrows. The trees, or maybe they were bushes, were cut down to make space for more accessible entry to the railway. I thought…

I had an idyllic hour at Roa Island Causeway over the high tide yesterday, but being me I am going to write about my WeBS count on Ormsgill Reservoir instead. Maybe I will do the Roa Island stuff later in the week. Regular readers will know the reservoir is a) where I first got into…

I promised to do at Atlas visit Friday and blog about it. I know that getting too detailed about an individual survey visit isn’t great reading, so I’ll stick to headlines. It was a gorgeous day for surveying. Visibility was good enough to see the Lake District and Snowdonia, so Herring Gulls and Feral Pigeons…

I said I would explain the hidden bird habitats of square SD3033 the Pleasure Beach is in. Basically there are a few trees on the eastern side of the amusement park itself, some scrubby trees along the railway cutting and further north the row of conifers in the above photograph. Thousands of people visit the…

The national Breeding Bird Survey uses randomly selected 2km x 2km OS map tetrads. A few years ago someone suggested on Twitter they had an out of the ordinary BBS square. I’m not one to brag, but I think I trumped them as for over 20 years I have been doing SD3033. This is SD3033.…

Today I had a couple of goes at grilling gulls, at the Waste Transfer Station at lunchtime and on the Wyre Estuary at Skippool this evening. I guess hanging round an active waste disposal site is an acquired taste, but hopefully the above picture shows it was nice on the riverbank. I keep hoping to…

I didn’t get out on the Prom as early as I had planned, but it was still the time of day where there are only dog walkers, birders and people who haven’t made it home yet from the night before on the seafront. I love being on the Prom on calm, sunny spring mornings before…

In a previous blog I wrote about being at Sabine’s Cambridge graduation ceremony and hearing Peregrines during the proceedings from the cathedral. Ann Taylor kindly pointed out that it wasn’t the cathedral, and indeed they favour the old Emmanuel Church and the spires of King’s College Chapel. But anyway history repeated itself today at Bryony’s…

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…