Category Archives: Birdwatching

‘I felt like a bird god’: why comedian Geraldine Hickey is excited for this year’s Aussie Bird Count

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The keen birdwatcher encourages others to take 20 minutes out of their day, describing the experience as ‘meditative’

In early October the comedian Geraldine Hickey went looking for tawny frogmouths, a charismatic bird with a frog-like beak and mottled feathers.

“They’re a good-looking bird,” Hickey says, though it hasn’t yet appeared in her annual bird calendar, a project she started as a “lockdown thing” that has gained its own dedicated audience.

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House sparrow tops Big Garden Birdwatch charts for 21st year in a row

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Blue tits, starlings, wood pigeons and blackbirds next most sighted in RSPB survey involving 600,000 participants

A friendly if slightly tuneless chirp is the most ubiquitous birdsong in British gardens with the house sparrow topping the Big Garden Birdwatch charts for the 21st consecutive year, according to the annual RSPB survey.

Blue tits, starlings, wood pigeons and blackbirds were the next most-sighted birds by more than 600,000 participants in the world’s largest wildlife garden survey.

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Spot the punk rockers: hope for waxwing boost in annual UK bird count

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People encouraged to record sightings of mohican-sporting birds in RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend

The scale of this waxwing winter will be revealed this weekend when people are encouraged to spend an hour recording the birds they see in their gardens, balconies, parks and school grounds.

The spectacular migratory, mohican-sporting birds have been spotted across Britain during the colder weather and will be recorded alongside more familiar sparrows, blackbirds and robins in the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch.

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‘The fight goes on’: the struggle to save Europe’s songbirds

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Campaigners help close the loophole allowing glue-trapping in France, but the battle to save endangered bird species goes on

“Chasse à la glu has ended, but the fight to save other birds is not over,” says campaigner Yves Verilhac. “We are now battling to stop other cruel hunting methods that lead to the killing of skylarks, lapwings, golden plovers, thrushes and blackbirds.”

Two years ago, Verilhac, of France’s Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO), was fighting to stop the French tradition of chasse à la glu – hunting songbirds with twigs and branches covered in adhesive.

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On my radar: Fiona Shaw’s cultural highlights

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The award-winning actor on the genius of Fritz Lang, the human cost of Homer’s Iliad and where to find the best live music in Ireland

Born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1958, Fiona Shaw studied philosophy at University College Cork before training at Rada. Her stage roles have ranged from Sophocles to Shakespeare, Beckett to Brecht; she has won two Olivier awards and directed theatre productions and operas including Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. She has also appeared in numerous films, including My Left Foot and the Harry Potter movies, and television series such as True Blood and Killing Eve, for which she won a Bafta. Her latest film role is in Ammonite, a romantic drama about fossil hunter Mary Anning, now streaming and in cinemas from 17 May.

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Snared: catching poachers to save Italy’s songbirds

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With five million birds a year illegally caught in Italy, activists in Brescia are teaming up with local police to trap the hunters

After two hours of scouring the mountains of Brescia, Stefania Travaglia finally finds what she is looking for. Among the remote farmhouses of an alpine hamlet, a spring-net trap is partially hidden behind a grassy embankment and a few trees. Tangled in the wire mesh, an exhausted fieldfare thrush sits silent and unmoving.

Travaglia sets to work quickly and quietly, hiding two motion-sensor cameras next to the trap. Clear evidence of wrongdoing is needed to catch a poacher. “You have to see everything: you have to see the trap; you have to see the person; and if there is a bird in it,” she says.

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To see a mockingbird: birdwatchers fined for breaking Covid rules

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Five twitchers travelled to Devon to photograph a northern mockingbird, last seen in the UK in the 1980s

Five birdwatchers have been fined for breaking Covid-19 restrictions after they travelled to Devon to try to see a rare specimen after a Twitter tipoff.

They were looking to catch sight of a northern mockingbird, normally found in North America, which had been spotted by Exmouth resident Chris Biddle.

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Writers retreat: seven authors on their outdoor escapes from lockdown

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Some literary minds crave a full-throttle rush. For others, it’s the peace in birdwatching, kayaking or finding refuge in the trees

Before lockdown, I occasionally got uneasily into a sea kayak with my kids – usually unbalancing it and tipping us all in the water. Then they exchanged the big multi-seater kayak for two lighter two-seaters, which I can actually lift.

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