02 Sunday Sep 2018
Sometimes you don’t even have to leave home to watch wildlife, even when you live in a first-floor flat with no garden. These two beautiful Collared doves were visiting the garden of a neighbour across the back lane. Although I can’t see them, this kindly person obviously has bird feeders that are always kept topped up with delicious bird treats, as quite a variety of birds visit the garden on a regular basis.
I wonder if they’re speculating about whether I also have food for them?
05 Thursday Jul 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, blackbird, British birds, bullfinch, Carrion crow, Collared dove, garden birds, Goldfinch, Great spotted woodpecker, Woodpigeon
My friend Sharon has a lovely garden: an area of lawn bordered by flowers, shrubs and hedge; a separate area for growing vegies, the glasshouse and the beehives; and a lovely little bit of wild woodland at the end. It’s a paradise for birds, particularly because Sharon also has lots of feeders that she keeps stocked up with seeds of various kinds and suet blocks. As a person who lives in a first-floor flat with no garden, I just love visiting Sharon’s garden. I could sit watching the birds all day long.
My photos show just a few of the birds that entertained us yesterday – and these 14 species are not the only birds that visit: House sparrow, Blue tit, Great tit, Collared dove, Woodpigeon, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Bullfinch, Carrion crow, Great spotted woodpecker, Magpie, Robin, Dunnock, and Blackbird.
The Great spotted woodpeckers have been bringing their offspring to the garden this year
The Woodpigeon doesn’t look too happy about the Carrion crow being so close
A Blackbird with an odd beak
‘This is ours’, squawked the Goldfinch to the Bullfinch, but …
… the Bullfinch won out on the day!
A beautiful Collared dove
03 Saturday Feb 2018
Someone asked me recently how you become a good birder. Well, I’m not sure I am, yet, a good birder but I was reminded of some thoughts I read in Simon Barnes’s most excellent book How to be a bad birdwatcher (Short Books, London, 2006) (which you really should read): ‘I have developed the habit of looking: when I see a bird I always look, wherever I am.’ And, in response to seeing a ‘How often do you go birdwatching?’ questionaire in a birdwatching magazine, ‘I don’t go birdwatching. I am birdwatching’ (my emphasis).
This photograph is, I think, an example of what Simon meant. A couple of days ago I went for a wander around the local town of Barry and was at the station, waiting for my train home, when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed movement above me. Two birds were walking along the beams that support the platform roof. So, of course, I had to look closer to see what they were – two lovely Collared doves – and, as I had my camera in my backpack, I had to quickly grab a couple of photos before my train pulled in. I am always looking! I am always birdwatching!
13 Thursday Apr 2017
Tags
birding, birdwatching, Collared dove, genetic mutation, Mutation affected sense of direction, Streptopelia decaocto
I came across the delightful bird in the series of three images below during a recent walk around Cardiff Bay. Sitting quietly in a tree by the footpath, it was indulging in a good preening, running its beak repeatedly down through its fluffed-up chest feathers. It’s a Collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto), a bird you’re often more likely to hear than to see, its continuous cooing floating down from the leafy trees where it’s sitting.
Amazingly, these birds only immigrated to Britain in the 1950s – they’re native to the Middle East but gradually spread across Europe before crossing the Channel, and they’re now very common garden visitors in villages and towns across the country. In Fauna Britannica, Richard Mabey notes that this incredible spread, more than any other European bird in the past 50 years, has been attributed to ‘a genetic mutation that affected the birds’ sense of direction and encouraged them to move north and west’, though the British Trust for Ornithology believes natural selection has probably now reduced this tendency. If it hadn’t, the birds would all be flying off over the Atlantic, a trip they probably wouldn’t survive.
