We have now lost two months of ringing with a corresponding loss of two months of data collection. Bird ringers confined to barracks have not caught other ringers’ birds and ringers have been unable to catch birds previously ringed by others. Many…
Lets face it….The reality is, my birding is on it’s arse, and the blog heading for liquidation. But welcome e-mails and excellent photographs are gratefully received, and are keeping me up to date on things in and around the area….
I had a typical late May ringing session in the reedbed at the Obs yesterday, which was paradoxically the first of the Spring! Ah well, better late than never. Obviously, and completely understandably, the lockdown had prevented us from doing any ringi…
Recent mornings saw overcast skies, cold winds and very little sunshine. Such mornings are not ideal for a visit to the Pennine hills with a camera itching to click. I pencilled in Wednesday for an early start and then watched as the forecasts did th…
With the BTO lifting some of the restrictions on ringing, we decided to make our Pied Flycatcher RAS in the upland woods of the Lune Valley our priority. First impressions have been exciting. In two of the larger woods with 110 nest boxes, we found 43 …
I managed to ring my first birds for the year yesterday, and what a joy it was to complete a field sheet at last! More of that later, but now I need to rewind four days to when I was working on the Cumbrian side of the North Pennines. It was a be…
….and another good idea.Following the – short on clarity – advice by the Right Honorable Boris Johnson, to be able to go out in your car to wherever and whenever you wish whilst maintaining social distancing, the therapeutic value…
There’s good news. Ringers in England may go ringing again subject to following the constraints which apply to the public as a whole. It’s bad luck for ringers who live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, whose devolved governments have taken a t…
Dug out a notebook on bird behaviour I started 20 years ago in 2000. The first entry in the book was of a Common Cuckoo seen at Barbondale, it was published in the British Birds issue in January 2002.The Call of the Common Cuckoo.I watched a male Commo…
Dug out a notebook on bird behaviour I started 20 years ago in 2000. The first entry in the book was of a Common Cuckoo seen at Barbondale, it was published in the British Birds issue in January 2002.The Call of the Common Cuckoo.I watched a male Commo…