Just a couple so far this month, one of the Dunnocks again and a not brilliant but not too shabby picture of a Jackdaw – they are usually are far too smart to allow themselves to be photographed easily. This one was at least eighty feet away, so not bad without a tripod.
RSPB
Digital news from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds includes two useful charts of spring migrating birds with their arrival and departure times. In March, or thereabouts, we might expect Wheatears, Sand Martins, Chiffchaffs, Ospreys, Swallows and Ring Ouzels.
The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)
The BTO Spring newsletter is here. It is nice to have something to look forward to in the post. There’s more artwork from Will Rose. I love the clean, simple design and vibrant colours and he is responsible for the lapwings on the cover of Into the Red, the follow-up to Red [List] 67, anthologies of writings and illustrations in aid of endangered bird species.
An overview of the important data gathering Bird Breeding Survey reveals that 30 years of fieldwork by volunteers has produced nearly 8 million bird records, with 320,000 for mammals and 200,000 for butterflies. There’s also a look at ongoing work on the effectiveness of wildlife-friendly management on individual farms.
An article on the still controversial subject of bird personality intrigues. Bolder, more risk tolerant birds are more likely to explore new places and have more offspring in a shorter time-frame, but are also unsurprisingly more likely to be predated, for example. Shyer, more risk averse birds may lose out when it comes to resources but they tend to live longer. Foraging strategies at each end of the scale are very different and those impact on everything else.
A review of Hamza Yassin’s Be a Birder, Gaia Books, 2023, by Jasmine Canham, BTO Youth Rep, is remarkably similar to my own – see earlier post Books Old & New January / February 2024.
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