Apologies for the lack of posts recently, it's not that I've not been to the patch, I've been most days, there just hasn't b...

Ages ago I volunteered to do NEWS - or the BTO's Non Estuarine Waterbird Survey   and my section is the Hemscotthill Burn to Chibburn Mo...

Autumn has started quietly on the patch. On Wednesday I put some nets up for a ringing session. I caught a mixture of adult and juvenile war...

I do like my notebooks and there is always something nice about finishing and old book and starting a new one. The first two birds written...

We put some nets up on Saturday morning but ringing was very slow and by midday we hadn't reached double figures. We caught our first ...

Definition of   dreich adjective Scottish (especially of weather) drear y; bleak: Dreich - even the ponies look miserable Well,...

We decided to ring at Lynemouth sewage works this morning, a bad idea. All of the weekends migrants seemed to have moved through, we only ca...

No blog activity this week. I've been internet free for a week at the famous (amongst ringers at least) Icklesham site in East Sussex. I...

The first swift of the year is a notable date in any patch-workers notebook, as the last of the migrant breeders to arrive it marks a bit ...

Sometimes, it is east to glance over some of our more common birds, forgetting how beautiful they are. How many times do you think "Oh,...