Army Birding

Roger great find. The photos are of Tommy and his son who live at Auld Haa in the southern part of Fair Isle, with a real treat of tolerant Waxwings. Tommy is an American whose family won a competition to live in the National Trust property Auld Haa. The photos were taken 5 days after Andy Harrison ...

Great birds Bob!

Whilst in Fair Isle two weeks ago there were reports of Greenland 'rostrata' and Icelandic 'islandica' Redpolls arriving from the NW too. Rostrata are large dark brown birds and islandica paler, so two more subspecies to keep your eyes open for amongst the Lesser and Mealy Redpolls this year.

This week has seen an American Bittern at Trewey Common, making an American double with the Heligan Green Heron for Cornwall and making 2010 an exceptional year for heron species in the UK. Cley is also doing an American double at the moment with a drake Green-winged Teal and an American Golden Plov...

Over the past 10 days Waxwings have been arriving in large numbers in eastern and northern parts of the UK. There has been a number of sightings of flocks in excess of 100 and at least one flock of over 500. As they strip berry bushes they will no doubt be spreading west and south, so keep your eyes...

The Hull Valley Wildlife Group, that maintains details for many sites in the Lower River Hull valley, including Top Hill Low and Swinemoor, has a new website: http://www.hullvalleywildlifegroup.co.uk/

Autumn is the time for seawatching and pelagics, when the weather stops the migration of land birds there is a chance of still seeing something unusual and perversely it appears that the worse the weather the better the birds with seawatching. In 2009 I paid my first visit to the Wirral in search of...

Occasionally birders come across the odd snake and there is something that you can do to help gather information on these often inconspicuous creatures, by reporting them to the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust. The trust is asking the public to contribute their sightings via the following l...

Bird news services have reported large numbers of Lapland Buntings in Iceland (120 at one site) and Fair Isle (184) in the past few days, possibly involving birds from Iceland, Greenland and/or Canada, rather than Scandanavia or Russia. In the past 48 hours small parties of birds are being reported ...

Andrew, Sounds as though you have made some real progress this week! Reference the Cockaded Woods, they often nest in loose colonies of a few pairs. They also have the habit of rising early and then roaming all day. Best time to see the birds appears to be dawn and dusk at their nest sites, which ar...

Following hot on the heals of the AOS discovery of an uncommon breeding pair of Wigeon near Wathgill, the RSPB and Kent Police has confirmed the first known British breeding record of Purple Heron in the Dungeness area of Kent. The RSPB has the pair under around the clock security and has advised bi...

Tony, Really pleased you got the Iberian Chiffchaff. You were lucky to see the Cetti's too, they appear to have colonised Potteric this year and are very uncommon in Yorkshire. Mark and I did gp for the GRW and had good views. On the way home I went to look for something else and instead came across...

There is also a Great Reed Warbler at Straws Bridge NR, Ilkeston, Derbyshire, just West of the M1 today.

If you are heading North to Wathgill for the AGM this weekend then you may be interested in a slight detour. A male Iberian Chiffchaff ( Phylloscopus ibericus ) has been present at Potteric Carr, Doncaster for the past few days and is still there this morning. Potteric Carr is just off the M18 and o...

With our AGM at Catterick this weekend, hopefully we will be treated to some moorland birds and perhaps as in a previous visit we may get to see an impressive Eagle Owl. I attach a link to a British Birds article originally published in 2008 that may spark some post meeting debate in the bar: http:/...