You are browsing the archives of UK.

Okay, we’ve had unborn babies and re-united twins on 10,000 Birds in the last few weeks - and now we’re doing houses…yes, it’s another non-birdy post, but I hope readers will forgive me because I woke up in a Wiltshire paradise today, and after the stresses of moving (box after box after box after box [...]

Some years ago I read on a bird forum (I forget which) some fairly negative comments about a Great Bustard Otis tarda re-introduction scheme taking place on Salisbury Plain, an ill-defined chalk plateau covering some 300 square miles (780 km2) of Wiltshire and Hampshire in central southern England, much of which is owned by the [...]

Almost a year ago I began a post describing a visit to the UK by one of the best bird bloggers on the net (the wonderful Carrie Laben of Great Auk - or Greatest Auk?) with the words. “If I visit a blogger somewhere and they don’t write about it within a few days I [...]

I can vividly remember when I was living in south-east England in the late 1960s/early 1970s (and still at school) sometimes catching a glimpse of small groups of long-tailed, squawking birds tearing across the skies. I had absolutely no idea what they were. It took me some years to discover that these birds were in [...]

Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus chloropus
UK. Various dates

As its colloquial name suggests this is a common breeding bird of marshy environments and lakes with plenty of bankside undergrowth. It is sometimes a secretive bird, scurrying back into cover when disturbed, but most birders (and many non-birders) will know them as being quite tame in many areas [...]

I just realised I haven’t written a word of a visit to my home patch last week by the NY blogger and birder Carrie Laben of Great Auk - or Greatest Auk? If I visit a blogger somewhere and they don’t write about it within a few days I start fretting that I must have [...]

Just for a change I thought I’d take a field trip in the UK last weekend. And just for a change it wasn’t birds I was looking for, but orchids. Yes, occasionally a young man’s fancy turns to flowers and what better flowers to look for than orchids - those beautiful and exotic plants that [...]

When I first started birding long, long ago (how long? pre-computer, but post the printed word thankfully) one of the birds that got me firmly and eternally hooked was a species that we here in the UK know as “the robin”. A small, rotund, fiery bundle of aggression and sweet song, the European Robin Erithacus [...]

Wood Pigeons Columba palumbis
Portland Bird Observatory, Dorset, UK. April 2008
 
The UK’s largest and commonest pigeon, the Wood Pigeon Columba palumbis is basically grey with a white neck patch and white wing patches which are clearly visible in flight. Although shy in the countryside (where it is commonly shot as a pest of crops) it can [...]

Some days the milk of human kindness runneth over (etc etc), and I surprise even myself with my generosity. My arch-listing-rival Graham “the kitten botherer” Langley mailed to say that a mutual friend, Tommy Pedersen, a fellow birder who is a Captain with upmarket airline Emirates, was coming to the UK and really wanted to [...]

Okay, hands up any one of you who have ever had a day of their Big Year ruined by selfish, fricking idiots on horses chasing a fox across the flooded fields of one of the most renowned wetlands in the world? Anyone else? That’s just ME then eh…

Yes, today - on the first dry morning [...]

I received an email on the 4th with the disturbing news that my rival lister, Graham, enjoyed his birding in Sydney (his first trip of the year) rather more than I’d hoped: whilst I’d been shivering in the northern winter in Japan he had been sauntering around that most beautiful of cities notching up a [...]

Shorebirds and warblers aren’t, of course, the only groups of birds migrating at the moment - and the excitement that greeted one particular gull species in Alaska this summer reminded me (yet again) that a bird one set of birders walks past without a second glance will cause another set near-coronaries as they sprint across [...]

I know this isn’t a seasonally relevant addition to 10,000 Birds, but Corey’s great post about flycatching Cedar Waxwings yesterday reminded me of an encounter I had two years ago with the Cedar’s larger and more northerly cousins - the Bohemian Waxwing (or just THE Waxwing as we lazy Brits tend to call it). Common [...]

Clattinger Farm (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve)
April 2007
Green-winged Orchids are named for the broad greenish veins that mark the sepals and appear most years at the end of April, flowering through to early June (though these particular plants flowered in mid-April: April 2007 was both the driest and warmest ever recorded in the UK). Dependent [...]

Morgan’s Hill, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve
05 July 2006
 

The North Wessex Downs - once the scene of a fierce battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers during the Civil War.
 

Morgan’s Hill Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve - near the entrance
 

On the edge of the North Wessex Downs is the small but beautiful Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve of Morgan’s Hill [...]

Bird’s Nest Orchid Neottia nidus-avis
Hampshire, UK. June 2006
 
The Birds Nest Orchid, a somewhat unusual orchid found primarily in Beech woods, is a sacrophyte - a plant without chlorophyll which lives on decayed vegetation (in fact the plant lives in partnership (symbiosis) with a fungus which which lives in the matted “birds nest” of roots [...]

Britain’s Orchids - David Lang (WILDGuides 2004)
Reviewed June 2006
 
Let’s be honest right from the start of this review: Britain is not blessed with an overwhelming variety of orchids and coming to them new is not so daunting as starting looking at moths, for example: there are just (depending on current taxonomy) 51 species of [...]

Fly Orchid Orchis insectifera, Bee Orchid Orchis apifera, and Fly x Bee hybrids
Somerset and Hampshire, UK. June 2005 and 2006
 
Fly Orchids are rather slender plants found typically in the Beech woods of Kent and Surrey, and less often in dry grassland and scrub on calcareous soils. Locally common in southern England and on Anglesey [...]

Pyramidal Orchids Anacamptis pyramidalis
UK, June 2005 and June-July 2006

Pyramidal Orchids are one of the most widespread and familiar members of the orchid family in the UK, mainly because they can be abundant on chalk downs, dune slacks, seaside golf links, cliff tops and on limestone pavements, and are often seen in large groups on roadside [...]