Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Birdwatch

ONE of the great joys about British birding is how varied the migration seasons can be. A species might show up in spectacular numbers one year, only to be virtually absent the next. Spring 2025 will be long remembered for its Hoopoe influx in early April, with Red-footed Falcon and Temminck’s Stint also putting in great showings during May. It wouldn’t surprise me if spring 2026 proves to be a lean season for all three. Movements or influxes are often easily linked to weather conditions, as in the case of this spring’s Red-footed Falcon arrival. Anticyclonic conditions with a warm south-easterly breeze off the Continent in the run-up to the Early May Bank Holiday weekend was a case of the ideal weather occurring at the perfect time. The proof was…

Situated 19 km off the North Devon coast and straddling the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean and the Bristol Channel, Lundy Island is one of the premier hot-spots to watch spring and autumn migration in Britain. Famed for its breeding Puffin colony, which continues to recover at an impressive rate, Lundy is a magnet for migrating birds and birders alike, as well as being one of the most important seabird islands in English waters. The wealth of Lundy’s birdlife can be enjoyed whether visiting for a few hours on a day trip or, better still, by staying on the island, either camping or in one of theself-catering cottages run by the Landmark Trust. The migration seasons are of the greatest interest for birders, with spring bringing the added benefit of…

Roseate Tern is one of the UK’s rarest breeding seabirds, Red Listed as a species of conservation concern and restricted to only one colony in England, but the species fares better in Ireland. It remains a major prize as a passage migrant away from traditional postbreeding roost spots, but with a little forward planning and a well-timed visit, you can significantly shorten your odds of connecting with this stunning species. Typically arriving from early May, Roseate Terns soon settle at their colonies and are seldom encountered on spring migration. However, late summer sees wide dispersal, particularly along the English east coast, and family parties gather at favoured sites from mid-July to early September. By late August, chances are at their highest as tern roosts peak and migration begins in earnest,…

Putting up a Common Swift nestbox is a positive thing to do and will play its part in helping a species which has seen serious declines in the last three decades. Persuading more than 40 households living along your street to add more than 100 swift nestboxes to their homes and create one of the UK’s largest ‘swift streets’ is quite another thing – but it’s exactly what Suzanne Pendleton did in Swinton, Greater Manchester. For Suzanne, her love affair with Common Swift is a relatively new one. Like many of us, she took some solace in the natural world around her during the dark times of the COVID-19 lockdowns, and found herself craning her neck more and more to see what the incredibly nimble birds were that she’d recently…

This month’s panel includes: Keith Betton, Kit Day, Chris Harbard, Matt Phelps and Amy Robjohns HIGH summer is here, and with it the long, sultry days that are perfect for sitting out in your garden and enjoying the vibrant wildlife haven you have created! As I write this in late May, we are experiencing the driest spring for more than a century and, while many plants, birds and insects have seemingly had a bumper start to their growing and breeding seasons, it’s likely that the impacts of such low availability of water will really start to bite once summer kicks in. In such dry spells, a reliable water source in your garden can be a real magnet – not just for birds, but also for bees, butterflies, and even hedgehogs…

BIRDS’ feathers wear out and so must be moulted each year, resulting in plumage changes in many species. This moult is usually a gradual replacement of feathers which will be timed so as not to affect the survival prospects of the bird by interfering with breeding or migration. There are some species which may shed and regrow lots of feathers at the same time. When this involves primaries and secondaries, it can result in some becoming flightless for a short period. Wildfowl are known to do this with males attaining their so-called eclipse plumage, when they resemble females. Mallard drakes, for example, moult first, commencing with the flight feathers in June and July, while females, which may still be incubating or broodrearing, moult later and lose their flight feathers in…

For birders starting out these days, Pacific Swift might seem like little more than a near-annual visitor to British shores. An exciting rarity, yes, but nothing exceptional in the grand scheme of things. However, as long-time twitchers will be quick to point out, this hasn’t always been the case! Few twitches are more legendary than the Pacific Swift at Cley, Norfolk, on 30 May 1993. This was only the second for Britain at the time, following one picked up exhausted on a gas platform off the Norfolk coast in 1981. In other words, pretty much every birder needed Pacific Swift for their British list at the time, so news of the Cley bird caused a mad dash for the North Norfolk coast. Many birders connected with the swift, but plenty…

Finder’s Report Wood Duck, Tiree, Argyll, 9 May 2025 SPRING 2025 had already proved exciting on Tiree with the island’s first Alpine Swift found by visiting birder Dylan Daunt on 10 April, followed by my first (and Tiree’s second) Common Crane on 27-28 April. Friday 9 May 2025 was a calm, sunny day and I made the most of it to check on the progress of breeding birds at various sites around the island. At 12.35 pm, I stopped to check some pools in west Tiree. With Garganey the target species, a quick scan with bins from my parked car revealed a good selection of duck including a drake Northern Shoveler, two pairs of Eurasian Teal and four drake Mallard. The duck were all on the largest and furthest pool…

There is a special group of birds that jumps out from the pages of the field guide at the beginning of every birder’s journey, at the stage when curiosity has been piqued and the first trips out with binoculars are being undertaken. Just as happens with the likes of Golden Oriole and Wryneck, the flicking of pages stops hard at the shrike section. The other two species from the family Laniidae that feature in most field guides for Britain demand attention for a moment, but it is Red-backed Shrike that comes as a revelation. It is a beautiful representative of a fascinating family of birds. Red-backed Shrike is also a species that, each of us learns, has disappeared as a breeding bird from these shores, but which remains a plausible…

The Ebro Delta is an important biodiversity hot-spot in the Mediterranean. Few places in Europe combine such biodiversity, accessibility and habitat diversity within such a compact area. This thriving ecosystem includes lagoons, saltflats, mudflats and rice fields, with wonderful views of the Mediterranean Sea. For birders, it offers year-round attractions, from breeding and wintering birds to migration. This is a place where shadows shaped like flamingos stretch across the flooded fields at every sunrise, while clouds seem to carry not water but swallows and ibises. Where egrets work the shallows of the channels, terns and gulls patrol from above every day, waders roost across the rice paddies or scatter by the sea, and passerines find temporary shelter among the bushes and trees that form that green, golden and reddish backbone…

This month’s expert panel: Mike Alibone, Keith Betton, David Callahan and Josh Jones RSPB Buzzard ED 80 Telescope AT £700, the most recent addition to the RSPB’s optics range is its most expensive telescope to date, reflecting the uplift in quality in terms of design, ergonomics and image delivery. Sturdily built – said to be the strongest chassis yet – and weighing in at 1,900 g including the eyepiece and protective case, the Buzzard is comparable to telescopes with similar specifications across the optics spectrum. The body is shrouded in smooth rubber armour with a ribbed underside to the prism housing, while matt silver rings either side of the generously wide helical focusing ring, and segregating the smooth-sliding protective objective hood, add identity and visual interest to the equipment. A rotating…

WITH daylight hours at the start of July stretching from approximately 4.45 am to 9.30 pm (depending on where you are in the country), there’s certainly no shortage of light in which to go out and photograph birds – although what we really want is good light. But what does that actually mean? I often make the point in this column about getting out early and late in the day. There are plenty of advantages to prioritising these times, including gorgeous warm light when the skies are clear. But getting up by 4.30 am to be out for the morning ‘golden hour’, then having a 10-hour break in the middle of the day only to stay out until 9 pm and miss your dinner isn’t for everyone. Thankfully, good light…

Every encounter with a Wood Sandpiper in the UK will put a smile on a birder’s face. This attractive wader is more readily seen during spring or autumn passage, but it is also one of our most elusive breeding birds and observing the species on its breeding grounds is a truly memorable if rarely enjoyed experience. If you are in the right place at the right time, the sound of a displaying Wood Sandpiper, when it performs its song flight high in the sky, will leave you with an everlasting impression. First, you might hear a gentle trill when the bird rises up to about 100 m. Once it has gained height, it produces the most beautiful flute-like song that can be heard over a wide area. At the same…

Wild birds have difficult lives. Each must find enough water and food to live, at least one mate and a nest site – and often undergo an extensive two-way migration every year. In the most extreme environments on Earth – mountain tops, polar regions and deserts – birds use very limited resources in habitats constrained by the lower and upper limits of the planet’s temperatures. Survival entails a sharpening of the instincts and, above all, special adaptations in behaviour and physiology. In my previous article on mountain birds (Birdwatch 378: 24-27), we saw how such conditions resulted in small numbers of species endemic to these environments. The hotter, drier conditions of the world’s deserts are greater in area and often have a varied avifauna peculiar to their region. A desert…

BIRDSONG has inspired composers and musicians for so long. It’s impossible to give the earliest example – particularly as the idea of making music beyond rhythm may even have been initially suggested by the sounds of an ancient human’s local birds. The advent of recorded sound enabled real recordings of bird sounds to be manipulated by both early electronic musicians and even the leaders of orchestras. Since the end of the 20th century, sampling technology has enabled those recordings to be further manipulated with often intriguing results. Enter Ron Geesin, an experimental composer of long standing, perhaps best known for his essential contributions to Pink Floyd’s classic 1970 album Atom Heart Mother, as well as electronic film soundtracks for the likes of John Schlesinger’s 1971 movie Sunday Bloody Sunday. His career…

SUMMER is well and truly upon us in July and, by now, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find birds that want to show for the camera, whether that’s because of the abundance of vegetation to hide in or their often-scruffy appearance due to the efforts of raising young. Insects, botany and other nonbirding activities can take up more of our time throughout summer. I confess to being partial to the odd round of golf! July can therefore be a rather slow month, so what I think we all need is a fast-flying target to turbo-charge our bird photography – and what species fits the bill better than Common Swift? Swifts spend a lot of their time blasting through the sky, hundreds of metres up in the air, where taking a…

FOR me, July is quite an underappreciated month for patch birding. Walking past the reedbed at Titchfield Haven one morning in 2019, I suddenly ground to a halt after a reeling song caught my attention. In mid-July I might’ve expected a Grasshopper Warbler, but this was the unmistakable sound of a Savi’s Warbler! The song of the Savi’s and sounds of the Roesel’s Bush-crickets duetting was quite something with the different frequencies of these two species discernible. Generally, I love natural soundscapes, but this combination felt hard on the ears! Of course, Savi’s Warbler is a national rarity in Britain, but this was the second individual that I’ve had during the time I’ve covered my local patch. An unseasonal July sighting was a Pale-bellied Brent Goose flying east on the…

A Ruddy disgrace IN response to David Callahan’s recent Ruddy Duck article (Birdwatch 395: 30-33), it is my view that the cull was never justified nor successful. On one occasion I was birding at a reservoir, watching some Ruddy Duck, when a group of lads got in a boat and started to mow them down with rifles. I complained and was told to “**** off”. When I looked inside their van, they had killed male Common Pochard, Tufted Duck and Mallard. I pointed this out to them but was again met with expletives and rifles pointed my way. I complained to the police and my local MP, but nothing happened. Many years later, while birding in Spain with a professional guide, we discussed Ruddy Duck and it was his opinion…