The latest news is that Tore has made it to Africa! From her previous last reported point, she has travelled down through Extremadura, into Portugal on 23the September at 9pm, down through the Algarve to the coast near Faro, before heading out to sea, at night, making landfall on the Moroccan coast at c.7am at Larache. She then kept going, passing Souk-el-Arba-du-Rharb, then west of Meknes, overnighted just south of Tadla, passing Ouarzazate at 2pm on 25th September, her latest fix […]

Did you know that….. 429,137 birds   ……have already been illegally killed by trappers in Cyprus so far this autumn? THIS NUMBER represents the BirdLife Cyprus estimate for how many birds have been illegally killed using mist nets and limesticks between September 1st and September 21st 2011. This death toll, which will be updated weekly during the autumn trapping season, is based on systematic monitoring of trapping activity in the field. Although only an estimate, it shows the extent of the problem out […]

The first sighting away from St Georges Island of one of this years Great Black back chicks was reported yesterday by Paul Veron in Guernsey. He also saw one of last years birds L:AJ8  on Perelle Beach, Guernsey, where it had been seen last October and January. Where has it spent the summer? We have now had several sightings from the Channel Islands and I saw one of his Lesser Black backs on St Georges Island on 5 August so […]

We are finalising dates for this winter’s birdwatching cruises. If you have been with us before and we have your email address we will contact  you as soon as the dates are confirmed. Thank you all for your enquiries. We look  forward to seeing you again soon.

We had an excellent day on St Georges Island last Saturday [25/06/2011] ringing 83 Great Black-back chicks with BTO rings and 69 with colour rings. The colour rings are taller than the BTO ones and the tarsus was not long enough on some of the younger chicks to take a colour ring. We hope to go out again in a couple of weeks to fit colour rings to these birds. Thanks to the two teams, Mark G, Mark W, Peter, […]

We are going through an extremely dry spell at present and House Martins have been checking their old nests but without any mud around to repair them. So if your House martins are having the same problem, can I suggest you make some mud for them? Edward Mayer from ‘Swift Conservation’ says ‘I have seen people helping House Martins by using old dustbin lids, sunk into their lawns and on patios, filled with nice sticky mud. Fun for your children […]

National Nest box Week 2011 runs from 14-21 February Organised by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Britain’s leading bird research charity, NNBW aims to encourage people to put up nest boxes in their local area which will promote and enhance biodiversity and assist with the conservation of our breeding birds and wildlife. As urban and suburban gardens and woods become increasingly ‘tidy’, the natural nest sites on which many of our bird species depend, such as holes in trees […]

At 9am this morning whilst wandering up the garden to let the chickens out I heard a chiffchaff-like call from the sycamores in the lane. I went back for my bins and lo and behold, what should be flitting around but a diminutive Yellow browed Warbler. It flicked across to the hawthorn tree above me and then proceeded to leaf-bathe in the heavy dew and preen. I went in and woke Chris and went back to check the bird was […]