Wales

We’d hoped for lots of migrant waders in Pembrokeshire, but found only Fishguard and Newport–the mouths of the Gwain and the Nevern, respectively–anything like productive.

All told, we saw more individual European Oystercatchers than all the other species combined. At Fishguard Harbor, Alison found a few dozen roosting on the rocks; they came down to feed [...]

I saw my very first Northern Fulmars a decade and a half ago on the cliffs of Norfolk, and I was looking forward to seeing them on their breeding grounds again on our visit this summer to Wales. The cliffs of Pembrokeshire came through nicely, with several birds seen gliding stiffly over the waves as [...]

In a teasing mood, I’ve been known to admit that I moved to Arizona just to get away from the gulls. It’s worked, too: I can go for weeks, even months, without seeing a larid in this state, and when I do run across one–even just a Ring-billed Gull–it’s a red-letter birding day.
Every morning in [...]

Late summer is notoriously one of the most challenging times to see passerines in the northern hemisphere: adults, the rigors of the breeding season behind them and the challenge of migration ahead, retire to the darkness of the hedges and sulk, renewing their feathers and their spirit for the cold season coming up.
European Robin, that [...]

There is a moment in Wild America when James Fisher suddenly stops and notices what he has been missing: There are, he writes, no noisy colonial landbirds in America. And he was right;Europe enjoys nearly a surfeit of crows, a wide diversity of species exploiting virtually every habitat, and most of them so confident in [...]