Join the Conversation

If you wish to register, please email me
Log in

Archives

Expand All

Dead Bird News

The latest is again murderous Malta, killing spoonbills this time. Just before that, rare whooping cranes are being shot in the southern USA. That’s what happens when ignorant rednecks get hold of guns.

No, expand that thought: the Department of Agriculture (or is it the Fish and Wildlife Service? How these people love to hide behind their meaningless, anodyne titles) slaughters millions of birds in the USA every year, without bothering more…

Yes, I Have Seen a Ptarmigan!

At Loch Leven in the early 90’s the most ignorant non-birder could hardly fail to notice the grouse-like things he was almost stepping on. [...]

2010 Newsletter

Google Groups
Subscribe to Newsletter
Email:
Visit this group

That’s what I may as well call it, so long has elapsed since the last one. I’m hardly abusing folks’ email addresses! On that subject this is the last letter I’ll post to those I have gleaned in my mail client. Here on in I’m leaving the mailing list management to more…

Using Birdstack in a Blog

But first: I thought I’d finally hit an inconsistency in importing my life list to the end of 2003. Wildlife Recorder had my total as 791 against 790.

Oh no! That would have taken some detective work to isolate and I was about to don the old deerstalker and dust off the magnifying glass. But I remembered more…

Firth of Forth Cruise, 2006

An intrepid seven embarked on the Maid of the Forth in search of puffins and other denizens of the briny. [...]

1999: Death on the A96, Moray

Shag

From October 4:

Lossiemouth was an unexpected treat. Quite apart from being a pleasant town with a real ale bar it had provided purple sandpipers, bar-tailed godwits, ringed plovers, turnstones, red-breasted mergansers, a stonechat, a rock pipit, gannets off-shore, and a shag in the harbour. The last of these proved difficult to identify. I am not used to seeing shags, so I had to spend a lot of time convincing myself that its forehead really was steep and it had very little white on the chin. More convincing was the way that it looked smaller than more…

Corn Bunting, Dyrham Park

Not quite on the National Trust estate but by the road down to Marshfield, which is their local stronghold. [...]

Goat Fell, Arran

Goat Fell

Golden eagle would sound nice as the star species of an ascent of the island’s highest point but consider this: the 2007 Arran Bird Report notes only half a dozen sightings from thousands of contributions. These may not be all the submitted records and certainly they don’t include the known nest sites. Quite right too: persecution in Scotland is an ongoing problem.

In any case, what chance more…