A wildlife-rich mosaic of habitats with free parking and a Visitor Centre just off the A1
Image by Marilyn Peddle, CC BY-NC 2.0 Latin name: Sturnus vulgaris Adults in the breeding season look basically black, but with a shining purple and green feathering, the starling is truly a very handsome bird. It is indeed very attractive and so underrated by both birdwatchers and the general public. The starling, like all birds,… Read More
Image by aaandreasss, CC BY-ND 2.0 Latin name: Turdus merula It has very few local names, but I have located blackjack (male) (Surrey), black thrush (Yorkshire), garden ousel (Cheshire) and colly (Somerset). We all grew up with the nursery rhyme “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie”, and just about every species from sparrows… Read More
Image by Corine Bliek, CC BY-NC 2.0 There has never been a time in my long birdwatching life that I have not been involved with this large and perhaps most attractive sawbill. This species has a very interesting history in the UK. It was widely persecuted in Scotland, but eventually bred successfully in Perthshire in… Read More
Image by Natural England, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Latin name: Egretta garzetta This beautiful, elegant bird is a small white member of the heron family, which comprises of 60 species and can be found on every continent except Antarctica. The Little Egret is now widespread in Europe, where the birds which breed in the north of… Read More
Image by hedera.baltica, CC BY-NC 2.0 Every morning when we draw our curtains, the first bird we normally see is a jackdaw – Britain’s smallest crow and one of our most sociable birds. It is mostly dark grey with a lighter grey nape and is about two-thirds the size of a rook or crow. Its… Read More
