Natural Selection

At this time of year a few birds that generally breed inland stop off on the Fylde coast on their migration in small numbers. They include species like Pied Flycatchers, Redstarts and Wood Warblers that turn up in Stanley Park and other pockets of trees like the Pleasure Beach bushes I mentioned in a recent…

Regular readers will know that I’ve been revisiting some books I’ve read previously in line with what’s current in my birding and blogging. Following on from Wintering by Steven Rutt I had a second look at Landfill by Tim Dee. I am glad I did. Landfill looks at the relationship between mankind and gulls, in…

As I was passing North Shore after work to collect Jane from the college I had a quick stop at the go kart track and former boating pool to look at the waders. I assume that many of the Turnstones still here well into the spring are non-breeders, though I could be wrong about that.…

With onshore winds some skuas were reported on the Fylde coast today, pushed closer to land. I had a quick look at lunchtime and saw very little. I’m on Foula again in June so I will get views of Great and Arctic Skuas like the one above. It’s a truism but few birds are genuinely…

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.…