Natural Selection

Tonight I saw swarms of Starlings passing over the house on the way to their roost on North Pier. It’s a privilege to be able to watch them even when it’s just a blink and you’ll miss it encounter like today. Better still to stand on the Promenade and hopefully be treated to the winter…

I am not sure what is about Rose Coloured Starlings, but there can’t be a species whose alternative names are so contrasting. On the one hand there is Rosy Pastor, whose other meaning is a minister in charge of a church or congregations. At the other extreme in informal parlance is Pink Stink, which I…

Tonight some of the writers who were involved in the Lifest New Writing Northwest Nature Writing Group last winter / early spring met on zoom. It was great to catch up with like minded people and share ideas. If you are interested in reading the anthology that came out of the series of workshops, which…

Jane and I went to Potts Corner at Heysham so seaglass searching and beach birding could be combined. This corner of Morecambe Bay was pretty quiet shorebird wise even though the tide wasn’t too far out. So I decided to lend a hand and was very pleased to find a marble on the tideline with…

After volunteering at Blackpool parkrun yesterday I was due to be in Fairhaven for a ramble, but with some time to kill first. So I decided to stop by the waste transfer station at Mereside and go through the gulls on the roof. Rock and roll eh… If your first thought on reading that was…

I do like a good Big Year book. I’ve read at least five other books on the subject*. This one had received some very good reviews so I didn’t think the focus on the state of Louisiana would be a problem. Marybeth Lima is a professor who has written several non-birding books. This overcomes the…

I am making a rare visit these days to Blackpool parkrun tomorrow. So I decided to post about some of the birds I have seen whilst volunteering at parkrun, not least because the stand out highlight was at Blackpool. I got involved with Blackpool parkrun soon after it started. When Fleetwood Promenade started I joined…

I don’t have much time to look for birds at the moment. I’ve been nipping to Singleton and Little Singleton and hoping for geese, and I’ve been quite lucky really. Today there were a couple of thousand or so Pinkfeet at the end of Occupation Lane, though they were very skittish due to disturbance from…

I had a quick look at Stanley Park lake today, before an exercise class at the sports centre. The lake is still closed off following the avian influenza outbreak, but it is expected it will be reopened soon now the worst has passed. It’s very sobering that the swan death toll was today reported to…

One of my regular haunts is the upper reaches of the Wyre estuary at Little Singleton. It doesn’t get the birds of the better known Skippool Creek area to the north west, but it’s relatively easy to get to and has its charms. The standard fare of the Wyre on this stretch is wildfowl, waders…