Sometimes I set out to see things, and sometimes things just turn up. Today was a bit of both. The thing I’d set out to see was a Garganey. A what? A Garganey. Which despite sounding like something you’d do at the dentist is actually a type of duck. We’re all familiar with the ubiquitous mallard, a bird that doesn’t get the credit it deserves for its brilliant, iridescent colouring simply because it is so well-known. But Britain has (whisper …
Category: Birds
My memory could be charitably described as ‘shocking’. So like many people, I rely on mnemonics to help me. But mine are always, for some reason, the opposite way around to the way you’d expect. On wiring plugs, I remember that Brown has got an “n” in it for neutral – so it isn’t, it’s live. It works really well – as long as you remember the last bit. My mnemonic for telling weasel and stoats apart is that a …
Metaphors for lapwings are getting harder to find. That’s because these days, retro games aside, the sort of electronic bleeps, pings and whistles that handheld game consoles used to make have been pretty much consigned to history, and what else can you possibly compare the sound of a group of lapwing to? Perhaps a Pachinko game parlour or the floor of a Las Vegas Casino? You get the idea. I was at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Langford Lakes reserves recently, watching …
Ok, fair enough, it’s not a bird, but rather a species of bird. It’s unusual in a number of ways, not the least of which is that it seems to like living near people. But it was particularly fond of World War Two, because Hitler’s bombs produced lots of rubble, and if there is one thing a Black Redstart likes, it’s rubble next to water and next to people. The Black Redstart is a very scarce bird. The British population …
It is an odd relationship. You always find Golden Plover in the company of Lapwing, but you don’t always find Lapwing in the company of Golden Plover. It is as if the Golden Plover, a flighty, twitchy bird always living on its nerves, needs the reassurances of Lapwings around it, while Lapwing are quite relieved to spend a day away from them. At rest, the Plover surround themselves with Lapwing, living in the centre of the flock, as if the …
It was one for sorrow, two for joy in the rhyme of my childhood. It went as far as ten, but never reached thirty-five, so now I’m unsure of my fate. I’ve walked just five minutes from my home, to search for damselflies in the series of small pools that are part of an optimistic flood relief scheme created alongside a local housing estate. As I arrive, the flock of magpies, more than I have ever seen in one place …
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