The Standlake Birder -

In a move considered long overdue by many birders, the British Ornithological Union have announced that the farmyard chicken has been added to the A list of birds recognised as recorded wild in the UK. The results of DNA analysis just in has confirmed the species as yummiyummisundilunchiemus . This is very welcome news to those birders currently in lockdown who have been fortunate enough to see this great rarity as it gives their UK lists an armchair tick. In an additional surprising move the BOU have announced that the Chinese Pond Heron has been admitted to the A list, but the Dodo, recently seen in the vicinity of the British Natural History Museum, has been placed on the D list. This has led to some birders questioning  the validity of BOU's listing criteria. In further exciting news scientists at CERN have announced the discovery of the Tachyon; the so called second god particle which bestows time on the universe. By plugging detailed new measurements of the res...

A visit to New York city in 1966 prompted the late great Jim Morrison to write Strange Days. The lyrics have perhaps never rung so true as they do today. Strange days have found us Strange days have tracked us down They're going to destroy Our casual joys We shall go on playing Or find a new town Strange eyes fill strange rooms Voices will signal their tired end The hostess is grinning Her guests sleep from sinning Hear me talk of sin And you know this is it Strange days have found us And through their strange hours We linger alone Bodies confused Memories misused As we run from the day To a strange night of stone We have two horses that we have to feed and water everyday so we are combining this with our once a day early morning permitted walk with the dogs at Dix pit. Its eerily quiet out walking with essentially all industrial noise and the background murmur of other humans going about there daily life’s silenced.  The everlasting cycle of n...

Glaucous Gull I love this time of year I really do!! The hedgerows are transforming from winter bleakness into lime green spring growth almost as though an artist has finally had time to put the finishing touches to his masterpiece. The garden is really starting to come back to life and the greenhouse is overflowing with vegetable and flower seedlings and cuttings. I heat the greenhouse to keep it above freezing in the winter and the frost sensitive perennial lobelias and dahlias are starting to shoot. Avid blog readers may recall that I sow our broad beans in the green house as sowing them directly outside simply provides lunch for our local mouse population. Well, guess what, there is a mouse somewhere in the greenhouse which has eaten every single one of the one hundred beans I planted! My mouse friendly trap is now bated with peanut butter so hopefully the offender will soon be caught and sentenced to transportation! One highlight of the spring garden is the evergre...

So it still exists then? I’m referring to the sun which finally put in an appearance on Friday. It even felt positively spring like. I was hence quite motived to do some birding and decided to try and see a really stunning drake Ferruginous Duck which had been on a small lake in the middle of Wolverhampton for the past week.  By the way, Lonely Planet voted Wolverhampton the fifth worst city in the world. If you have never visited this says all you need to know! Ferruginous ducks are the rarest diving duck in Europe with an estimated population of  just 13,000 pairs the majority of which are found in Hungary and Romania. It’s the same old story I’m afraid of habitat loss driving birds towards extinction. Now I’ve mentioned before the problem with exotic quakers, i.e they have a very bad habit of doing a bunk from collections.  An added complication with Fudge ducks, as these guys are nicknamed for rather obvious reasons, is that there is ...

For those of us old enough to remember the seventies when music was good, and I mean very very good, Free were a cracking rock band who had a big hit single called “alright now”. Click here  to see Free perform their seminal single at the Isle of Wright Yes kids your modern music really is sh*t! Hold on, oh crap, I think I can remember my dear old mum saying this to me around 1970! Now the title actual refers to the fact that as of Sunday 1 st  March following a seven year ramp down, and at the ripe old age of sixty four, I’m finally fully retired. Saturday was the last day of my last working contract which was with the UK atomic energy authority originally as a non-executive director and more recently as an advisor to the board. UKAE are developing fusion as a green zero carbon energy source. It’s the process that fuels the sun and is quite different from fission, the process that powers our existing nuclear power generation. Perhaps more on this at a late...

Over the years we have been blessed with many beautiful visitors to our bird feeders. Blue and Great Tits and Goldfinches are year round guests.  Coal Tits are also regular visitors all be in in much smaller numbers. The winter, however, seems to be the season when we can hope for something a little special. Last year, for example, was the year of the Brambling. For six wonderful weeks at the end of winter a flock of ten or so of these delightful northern visitors were almost every present under our feeders. Four years ago a spell of hard cold winter weather drove Siskins and Redpolls to our feeders in unprecedented numbers. This year seems to be the year of the Greenfinch. While they are present every year this winter has been notable for their exceptional numbers. At any one time we have had up to twenty finches in and around the feeders. I find this very heartening as their numbers national have been greatly diminished by the   protozoal  parasite...

I decided to do something a little different this morning and have a stroll around Wytham woods. I must confess that these woods hold bitter sweet memories for me. For most of my adult life I was (was being the operative word) a very serious runner and Wytham Woods was the location of my last ever competitive race in 2010. In order for me to win our running club championship that year I had to compete in the last race in the competition even though I was carrying a pretty major tendon injury. The result was that I won the club championship but exasperated the injury so badly that it was six months before I could run properly again. By this time the motivation had really gone and I soon decided that my serious running days were over. Wytham woods was also the location for my clubs weekly hill training sessions in the winter. These involved some ten miles of hill repetitions, i.e jogging down a hill then running flat out up it repeated ten times before moving onto the next hill – i...