Britain

Build a British Bird List

New to, or just recently started birding? Wonder which are the birds you’re most likely to see? The first part of this book lists 250+ species in just that order. Now you have a plan to make a solid start on your British list. The next part lists likely sites for the species towards the [...]

15% Off British Birding Year

Seems like my printers want to promote this.

Here’s their disclaimer: “Use coupon code BEACHREAD305 at checkout and receive 15% off The British Birding Year. Maximum savings with this promotion is $10. You can only use the code once per account, and you can’t use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer [...]

Corn Bunting, Dyrham Park

It’s been a good few weeks for this species: first, one up in East Yorkshire; then near Martin Mere; now, not quite on the National Trust estate but by the road down to Marshfield, which is their local stronghold. Another bunting, a yellowhammer also showed, for only the third time this year – a far cry from my Angus days when they filled the fields round Auchmithie. In fact, they even came to my feeders there.

I was in South Gloucestershire to check for more…

Spotted Flycatcher, RSPB Ham Wall

Another new species for my Somerset list with an adult feeding two juveniles yesterday evening. Technically Lytes Cary should have the honour because a spotfly was hawking near the pictured bits of topiary late afternoon. In the name of efficiency though I’ll not add that National Trust house to my site inventory, unless it comes up with a real stonker some time.

Not that more…

Eastwood between Showers

More like downpours today and last night, so a little reluctant to venture on to Portbury Wharf. The shopping needed doing anyway and the route back from Eastwood and Battery Point allows that.

I included the Point in a forlorn hope that the gale-force gusts may have blown something up the Bristol Channel. The tide was out, so more…

Port Marine between Showers

This is more like the Bristol area. I’ve survived six months without an umbrella but today had to don the old cagoule to check the local patch. And if the weather is no longer surprising, so too are the birds. Usual suspect time. Of those that weren’t lying low, which birds tend to this time of year, what with young to protect. I even managed to belie my assertion about the inevitability of rock pipits.

So, I’ll have a rant more…

Red Kites, Devil's Bridge

These birds are really branching out from their Rhayader stronghold. The last time I was up the Ceredigion coast, albeit back in 1998 at RSPB Ynys-hir, I had no record of them. Now you’d be hard put to miss the species. Ones and twos all the way down from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth, then inland to Devil’s Bridge, where six were in view at one time. Over the Cambrian Mountains to the birds’ highest density round Rhayader itself and on almost to the Brecon Beacons. Kites, kites, kites.

It was marvellous, just like more…

Goat Fell, Arran

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…