Natural Selection

It was eBird’s October Big Day today, on which all who use the platform are asked to make a special effort to record birds. I had to get to Southampton ahead of our transatlantic odyssey but wanted to take part. Yesterday I had bought the ‘wrong kind of carrots’ for Simba the guinea pig so…

It was fogbound Tuesday morning so I aborted a planned seawatch. When it lifted I headed to the go kart track where shorebirds wait out the tide. There were about 30 Turnstone and twice as many Redshank. Rock Pipits skitted about, they seem to be more conspicuous in winter now they breed here. I was…

Hoopoe family earlier this year in Porto Santo I spent most of last week birding around the Barrow area. I set off on the Sunday late morning working my way round Morecambe Bay via a couple of convenient good birds available. One of these was a Hoopoe on the beach at Aldingham (the other was…

I’ve been too busy to blog recently, but I want to get back into the habit as I’m sailing from Southampton to New York this month and I think that will be a story worth sharing. During my sabbatical I have managed to continue my monthly look aheads to what wildlife can be seen in…

Given the weather forecast I decided to forego the planned seawatch in the morning, and head for the estuary at Skippool in the predicted better evening weather. It was a glorious evening when I joined Paul Slade scoping the estuary. He’d had 30 Common Sandpipers, and a couple of Raven I eventually saw on the…

At the Cumbria Bird Club Committee last night I got my copy of the county bird report for last year. I was considering doing a review, but as one of the writing team I can’t objectively do that. So let’s call this an appreciation. An eye catching cover that makes the potential purchaser want to…

I’m not doing enough to reduce my birding carbon footprint, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share my efforts to improve. Today I had a work meeting in Bispham at the north end of the North Blackpool Pond Trail. I live fairly near the end of south end of the NBPT so I decided to…

I was looking for dolphins off Gynn Square last week unsuccessfully, though several seals were keeping me entertained. I scanned north to see if there were any waders on the edge of the go kart track. A pipit popped up next to the Oystercatcher I was watching, and even though I was distant viewing through…

Recently on Shetland I took the opportunity to do some bird related reading in the evenings on the less productive days. I started with ‘A Mind Blowing Trip To A Planet Called Earth’ by Nigel Wheatley. This weighed in at a whopping 737 pages, and when I got through it I was after something more…

I’ve been a bit busy to do a blog lately, but I’ve been meaning to do something on the bird highlights of my recent trip to Shetland. They came at each end of the trip, and one was rather more bittersweet than the other. For the first time on my northern ventures I stayed on…