A variety of wading birds - both passage migrants and over-wintering ones - have been showing around the North Devon coast these past weeks. Curlew sandpipers, green and wood sandpipers, a (single) spotted crake, ringed plovers, turnstones and bar-tailed
There are many yellow-coloured wildflowers presently showing along the Tarka Trail!
Prominent of course are the various hawkweed, sow-thistle and ragwort species, not forgetting representatives of the cabbage - cruciferae - family such as charlock
Natural migration is one of the world's wonders. Consider the many bird species little bigger than babies' fists flying epic journeys, through heat and tempest over desert, forest and ocean for a spring and summer stay in Britain. And
The past week has thrown up a few interesting birdwatching surprises here in north Devon. Firstly I went out to Newbridge near Bishops Tawton on 18th Feb to check out the flocks of geese and swans frequenting the fields bordering the railway line and
In times of harsh weather, such as we are experiencing in this young New Year, our feathered brethren are daily tested to the limit. Feeding methods, evolved over millennia, can now prove decisive to the survival of hundreds of their number. For obvious
Waxwings those exotic casual visitors are presently in North Devon. January 5, a dull half-lit day suddenly found redemption in my eyes. For quite by chance I spotted twelve of these much hoped for birds in a tree at Roundswell, Barnstaple. It
For the birdwatcher the weeks and months through autumn and winter are as full of interest as any other, as several species of wildfowl move down from their high Arctic breeding grounds. Hotspots, of course, are coast, estuary and lake, places more
As well as a number of grasses and several wildflower species of mid to late summer display architectural qualities, these include plants such as hedge mustard, bristly ox-tongue, weld and members of the thistle, willow-herb and the carrot families.
A warm and sunny afternoon spent logging natural history from the Tarka Trail just out of Barnstaple ended on a high note indeed. Having stopped to admire a resplendent drake shelduck feeding alongside its smaller mate by a channel of shallow water -
For practically the whole course of my life I have been conscious of the work of the eminent ornithologist David Lack (1910-1973).
• Andrew Lack speaks at Blackwell's, in Oxford
Mr Lack taught biology at Dartington Hall between 1934 and
On the first day of September, and with the aim of photographing curlews to supplement a magazine article I had just written, I made for the Tarka Trail at Pottington. And, as expected, by looking through the lens of the camera, through my binocular and
The prolonged dry spell has been of immense benefit to our early breeding birds and mammals, likewise pollination-seeking wildflowers, shrubs and trees.
• A holly blue butterfly resting on bluebell
• A North Devon location for pyrenean
BY MID APRIL most members of the corvidae and turdidae are near to, or have completed, the raising of first, or only, broods. Rooks are well on course to do so, usually closely followed by the solitary nesting carrion crows. I have watched yet another
FOLLOWING my article on the sparrowhawk I have been contacted by Robert James of Lee, near Ilfracombe and Richard Huxtable, of Beaford.
• A sparrowhawk photographed by Beaford resident Richard Huxtable
• A sparrowhawk in a garden at