ring ouzels

  • Nature Notes

    An Almost-Hoopoe. .My ten-year-old daughter described this reluctant spring perfectly as we passed a bank of wood anemones, their petals pursed tight, like lips withholding a secret: ‘it’s like the ground knows it’s spring, but the sky won’t have it’. There were patchy reports of spring migrant birds coming through – wheatear and ring ouzel. […]

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  • Nature Notes

    Mountain Blackbirds. I am feeding the farmland birds (on a grand scale) for the last time this season, driving round the depleted wild bird cover plots in the 4WD Gator, spinning out seed like gold dust from the hopper behind me. The songbirds are all nesting or moved on now, but they are all set […]

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  • Nature Notes

    Little Owl Waltz. It’s been a week of quiet spring revelations – of frost after hail and blackthorn blossom. Riding the horses along the edge of the scarp, a raven passes in the opposite direction. With almost 1,000ft below us, it marks our presence with an easy flip-flop of a barrel roll, Top Gun style, […]

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