Natural Selection

juvenile Garganey by Stefan Berndtsson used under Wikimedia Commons licence Yesterday I was mostly doing proper bird surveys rather than birding for fun. Under the auspices of the new Wintering Bird Survey I did my long-term square at Blackpool Pleasure Beach with the usual mix of gulls, Feral Pigeons and scoter on the sea. I…

Per eBird there are five lark species recorded in Cape Verde. One of these only occurs on the island of Raso (well done if your guess was Raso Lark). All the others were possible on Sal where Jane and I went in 2017 and 2018, three residents and one rare visitor. The three resident lark…

White-rumped Sandpiper by Dario Nix used under Creative Commons licence The Wyre around Skippool and Little Singleton has been well covered this year. I was fortunate enough to find the first American Wigeon on this part of the estuary in January. Whilst I was too busy to blog Jonny Scragg had the Fylde’s first Forster’s…

Last night I had an hour to do some birding. I was aware that there had been a Fylde Bird Club meeting there on Tuesday which hadn’t seen much, but it’s the best site close to home. It was pleasant enough with a couple of Greenshanks and a flock of around 70 Black-tailed Godwits over…

Last week I did my first visit of 2025 to easily my longest standing survey commitment, the Breeding Bird Survey of Blackpool tetrad SD3033. I’ve written about this before, including a couple of years ago as linked below. https://naturalselectiondotuk.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1067&action=edit The previous article mentions that 51 species had been seen on my surveys to 2022, and…

I meant to blog every day, but being holiday I didn’t hold myself to things like that. So here is a summary for anyone interested. I continued to spend a bit of time birding in the area round the hotel. In this regard it was lovely to be reacquainted with Marsh Sandpipers, as I’ve not…