Natural Selection

On my way to the survey in SD55 yesterday I had seen a decent flock of Pinkfeet by the A585 at Singleton. I had a look through them on the way there and on the return journey, but couldn’t pick anything out. So this lunchtime I had a quick run out in the hope they…

For the last few years I have helped in a winter bird survey covering the Lancaster district. When I started I did the whole of the SD55 10 kilometre square. East of the M6 this includes a few fishing lakes, the villages of Abbeystead and Dolphinholme and heather upland moors. These days Rob Foster covers…

You know it’s bad weather in Fleetwood when the Nature Park is empty on your arrival. Normally there are plenty of dog walker’s cars. I took advantage of the conditions and lack of canine footfall on the bridge to get some ‘ducks in rain’ pictures. Without wishing to be anthropomorphic the regular drake Shoveler didn’t…

Recently I have been musing on what constitutes a dream find for a birder. This was partly prompted by David Roche discovering a Varied Thrush on Orkney, and a light-hearted suggestion on Twitter that he had ‘completed birding’. Finding rare birds will always be a mixture of luck, persistence and skill. Logically you might expect…

Birding is very seasonal in many respects. On New Years Day people spend a lot of time in the field, and then for some the work starts on the annual bird report. I speak as a veteran, I’ve been involved in writing either Birds (And Wildlife) In Cumbria or the Lancashire Bird Report continuously since…

‘And the message from coming from my eyes says ‘Leave It Alone”. Seven Nation Army, The White Stripes I spent a lot of my birding day yesterday looking at Teal. An hour or so was whiled away scanning through them on the incoming tide on the Wyre Estuary, and much of a couple of hours…

It can be difficult to know how many birds of a given species are in a given area, it can also be very easy. There used to be several Long-eared Owls wintering in Blackpool at Marton Mere, they aren’t there now but if they moved roost a few hundred metres they might be undetected. Some…

As Bryony and Sabine were both visiting today my first birding of 2022 was low key. I volunteered at Fleetwood parkrun first thing, where the New Years Day dip in the Irish Sea was in full swing. Birdwise the highlight was four Goldeneye on the marine lake behind my marshalling point. Like a lot of…