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Eastwood, Portishead

For non-urbanised passerines the best spot in town, bar Weston Big Wood, which is not really in town. From the Royal Inn a few minutes amble along the top path usually nets me pheasant… OK, it’s not a passerine but I’m always amused that one chooses to live up there. Great spotted woodpecker, jay, [...]

RSPB, for Birds, for People?

For ever? It seems I’m a good two tag lines out of date. They’ve been “a million voices for nature” since and are now “nature’s voice”, which I do prefer. The being for people business seemed to play to the baser instincts of hom sap.

“What’s in it for me, guv?” the cynical ear would [...]

High Tide but No Green Grass

Nor no mud neither. That’s what happens when the Earth gets too close to the Sun. Actually, I’ve never understood this. We’re only 147 million kilometres distant around the beginning of January, compared with 152 million in July. Since the highest tides occur when the Sun and Moon line up, shouldn’t the very highest [...]

2008: The Narrogin Lesson

Also like many small Australian towns, Narrogin had its resident flock of galahs. Sometimes a place would have corellas and sometimes, in the east, cockatoos; but galahs it was for Narrogin. Come the evening and time to roost, the birds would make the fact obvious with mass screeching flights. I’d wonder if there would [...]

Gull Identification Solution

It’s a tricky problem, especially with the big buggers who keep getting split along ever finer colour/structure lines. My yellow-legged gull was a case in point. Now we have the perfect excuse thanks to Thing, who also counts coots.

2009: New Zealand Honeyeaters

A year ago to the day I had just disembarked on Tiritiri Matangi and was wondering which would be my next new land bird for the trip.

“Only the most obvious and the bird most likely to be seen on the mainland. Indeed, one I had seen both north and south back in 2003, so [...]

Local Patch Buntings Cling On

Reed buntings, to be precise. And no further than 100 yards from my gaff, in the narrow strip of saplings that leads onto Portbury Wharf. Two individuals, male and female, were there a couple of days ago, and again this morning.

With breeding very much on birds’ minds now, this pair may be prospecting nest [...]

Portbury Wharf, Portishead

The local birders, and hence the Bristol Ornithological Club, and the Ordnance Survey have this as the area bound by the Port Marine housing development, Sheepway Road and Royal Portbury Dock. So, I can’t think there’s much appetite for calling it Ashlands as I wrote a while ago.

What’s in a name? Does a parcel [...]

1999: Ravens, Cotswold Water Park

Birds change throughout the year. They move around; they behave differently; they even alter their looks. Their surroundings change too. I’m collecting, possibly for a book, a series of personal vignettes to illustrate some of the key points in each month. This one, from September 15, looks fine for an autumn sketch (and it [...]