10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 16, 2024
Counting the Birds I was in my teens when I undertook my first bird-survey: it was field work for the British Trust for Ornithology’s The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland. The breeding and wintering birds of Britain and Ireland. The breeding and wintering birds of Britain and Ireland.
10,000 Birds
DECEMBER 3, 2013
Fortunately, I had T he Crossley ID Guide: Britain & Ireland by Richard Crossley and Dominic Couzens on my desk. I knew I would not be seeing the bird in its rosy-breasted breeding plumage, but somehow seeing the bird in all its forms helped crystallize its appearance in my head. I studied it. A miscellaneous pot indeed!
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10,000 Birds
OCTOBER 4, 2016
It also makes it a little intimidating to be doing a review of Britain’s Birds: An Identification Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland. Over 3,200 photographs have been used, most showing species in their habitats. So, how do you find the species account for Kestrel if falcons are not placed between woodpeckers and parakeet?
10,000 Birds
MARCH 1, 2024
Black-tailed godwits winter in large numbers on the estuaries of both Norfolk and Suffolk, and we know that nearly all these birds breed in Iceland. They are of the race islandica , a sub species of the nominate race, limosa. In breeding plumage islandica godwits develop a deeper red plumage than their limosa cousins.
10,000 Birds
MARCH 8, 2024
Secondly, much of the appeal is that this is a bird we don’t see in the UK very often, for Waxwings are an irruptive species, and in most years only a few ever reach our shores from their breeding grounds in the boreal forests of Scandinavia. I’ve managed to see them, too, on their breeding grounds in Finland in summer.
10,000 Birds
FEBRUARY 9, 2023
There was one odd reprint in 2018, when the Subalpine Warbler was split into the Eastern and Western species, but the changes in the guide weren’t sufficient to call it a 3rd edition, so it remained the updated reprint of the 2nd edition. I haven’t noticed changes in the few descriptions of harder to ID species that I compared.
10,000 Birds
AUGUST 6, 2013
I couldn’t wait to give names to all my new species. I tried using the Internet, but found it frustrating for all the usual reasons; websites either didn’t include all species or were difficult to use for identification. Britain’s Dragonflies: A field guide to the damselflies and dragonflies of Britain and Ireland.
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