• March's best wildlife sights - and where to see them

    March means one very exciting thing in the world of wildlife – spring has arrived! To celebrate this most marvellous month of the year, here’s my whistle-stop tour of the best March sights and sounds - and the RSPB reserves where you can see them. I hope it will whet your appetite!

    Welcoming in the big five
    March marks the start of spring migration, the arrival of some top travelers and the completion of some…

  • Photo of the week: One puffin, two puffin, three puffin, four…

    Yesterday, Anna posted about those nature spectacles that sit on our bucket lists waiting for the big tick. Thanks to inspiration from her blog post and Simon Barnes’ column in the latest Nature’s Home, I started thinking about how often I sit here at HQ and say “that would be amazing to see”.

    There is one bird that seems to be mentioned repetitively through those words. The puffin. A pint-sized beauty…

  • What’s on your wildlife wish list?

    In the current issue of Nature’s Home (page 49), our regular columnist Simon Barnes urges us to make some ‘nature resolutions’ for 2018, to get out there and see the wildlife, or natural spectacles, that we’ve always wanted to see. 

    Simon gives us advice on seeing three of the UK’s most-wanted birds (gannet, avocet and puffin), pointing out that it’s easy enough if you’re prepared to travel…

  • Why you should see hares this spring

    A low white sun, and an icy-blue sky. It’s early-morning, and I flipped the calendar to March just yesterday. I’m walking a bridleway that butts up against a field in rural Suffolk. The stubby green crop opens up like a greased centre parting to my right, and my eyes lock with a familiar character. Against the dry dirt, two orange marbles float in mid-air. Moments later, a white flash hurtles away from me and I breathe…

  • Photo of the week: a cold start for a skylark

    I often take the 40 minute walk to the shop at the weekend if I haven't got much else planned for that day. The walk starts at the Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust reserve Byron's Pool, and then cuts across some scrubby grassland. It's not the world's most exciting walk, but not bad for a supermarket run and I'll often see a hare or two. Last weekend as I took to the edge of the grassy scrub, I was treated to my first …

  • Deadline looms for Big Schools Birdwatch

    Those of us who took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch will have submitted our results by now (quick, do so here if you haven’t yet!)

    But alongside the Big Garden Birdwatch, education establishments up and down the country have been counting the birds from their playgrounds and sports pitches, for the Big Schools Birdwatch. Here’s how it’s done.

    https://youtu.be/sLzR0LjL_gY

    If you’re a teacher…

  • What can gannets teach us about love?

    “How should I express myself to the person I most admire this Valentine’s Day?”

    The lucky among us will be considering just that in the run up to the day of lerrrve. For Nigel the gannet it was obvious: “Break out my best moves.”

    I hear ya Nige!

    He expressed himself in the only way he knew how, and persistently courted another gannet. Unfortunately, his love interest had a heart of stone…

  • Nature's Home photo of the week: a trio of tits

    My choice for the Nature's Home photo of the week is reader Patrick Ball's brilliant capture of a right-angled long-tailed tit coming in to land and join its fellow flock members on a post . I love the way the other two seem to be watching it in admiration - and wondering whether to get out of the way! Patrick has done a great job not in just photographing the top bird in a really unusual pose, he has also managed…

  • Give a green heart this Valentine’s Day

    Next Wednesday is the day we pull out all the stops to show the people we love how much we love them. But we love nature, too, so – as you’ll see on page 40 of our current issue – the RSPB is also asking you to Show the Love for your favourite wild places, species and activities. 

    Remember your love for nature this Valentine's Day. (Photo: Ben Andrew)

    Much of what we love is at risk…

  • Wild about February - finding winter's star species

    How has the weather been for you this winter? I’d describe it as wet, windy and mild here in south-east England – none of which are great for the arrival of many of my favourite winter birds. For good numbers of wild geese and the scarcer ducks to arrive from the continent, we need a nice cold north-east or easterly airflow, combined with freezing conditions to the north and east of the UK. The dominant flow…

  • Photo of the week: a house for a mouse

    Giving nature a home… and all the food it could ever eat. I couldn’t help a smile and little chuckle when I saw this image – thanks for sending it in, Ian! (photo courtesy of Nature's Home reader Ian Cornish)

    How this wood mouse got into this feeder is anyone’s guess *wink wink*, but I’m sure it had one of the best views for a Big Garden Birdwatch imaginable. It’s likely feeling quite…

  • Big Garden Birdwatch: Our results

    Things have become a bit competitive at the Nature’s Home desk this week.

    Last weekend, we did the Big Garden Birdwatch with our respective households. Two of us (Aisling and Anna) did it in our gardens, and Emma P, who is basically garden-less, reported from a local park instead, which yielded plenty of water-loving birds, including gulls, waterfowl and a heron, bringing her total up to 13 species.

    Emma snapped…