The last time we asked you to post comments on our blog after reading David Lindo’s feature in Birds magazine, you blew us away with your response to our request to tell us about your bullfinches.

I asked David to take a look into the often hidden life of the black redstart in Birds Autumn 2012 – a bird that lives its life in the breeding season high above our towns and cities eking out an existence among…

With sunny days as rare as hen’s teeth this summer, I reacted to the weather forecast for a hot Sunday with sunshine with, “Right, I’ll be out all day – I’ll be back at dinner time”.

It was worth risking the wrath of my girlfriend Laura because mid July means a chance to see one of the UK’s most spectacular, and elusive insects: the purple emperor butterfly. It inhabits ancient woodlands…

Coming  to your doormat from 18 July...

The advertising in Birds magazine is even more important than it is for most magazines - the income we receive from our advertisers allows us to print the magazine at no cost, so we have more money for conservation work.

I work closely with the advertising team, Henry, Charlotte - and Louise who has join us recently to look after the classified ad section. We work together to make sure that the advertising and the editorial…

Joel (Birds magazine designer) and me have many of our best ideas for the magazine during our lunch breaks when we take a walk around the beautiful Lodge nature reserve. Today has been a particularly good day for coming up with some great new feature ideas for the next few issues - the sun has definitely helped to inspire us!

It was 28 degrees here in Bedfordshire today, which for Summer 2012 is an absolute scorcher…

An immature scarce chaser (Laura Ward)

Apologies for the grotesque close-up of my face - just focus on the rather nice dragonfly.

It's a scarce chaser - well-named because it's only found in half a dozen or so main areas in south and east England. They're a speciality of the River Ouse near where I live in Cambridgeshire. My girlfriend Laura and me took a walk along a stretch of the river on a rare hot day…

Regular blog readers will know about my wildlife watching adventures over the Springwatch period, but as promised in the last issue of Birds, here's another update on my summer wildlife-watching.

The weather has scuppered several of my planned trips to see a variety of butterflies and dragonflies this year and has also temporarily scuppered my garden badger watching because of the rain-induced thick growth of vegetation…

So, day one of Springwatch ‘home alone’ as my girlfriend, Laura spends the week at RSPB Ynys-hir helping out behind the scenes of the show. I watched the live broadcast on BBC2, particularly impressed with the underground mole footage and the people with 11 young foxes in their garden.

So, having made myself the sort of ‘man home alone’ dinner that would have made Laura wince, and inspired by the show, it…

Springwatch is almost here and I'm being left home alone next week as my girlfriend swaps my stimulating company for the delights of RSPB Ynys-hir in Wales - the home of Springwatch.

Part of Laura's job, as RSPB PR Project Manager, is to work with the BBC and to help things run smoothly for the annual TV extravaganza.

I know that lots of Birds readers enjoyed the 'Springwatch -  behind the scenes' feature in…

Charlotte is Birds magazine’s Advertising Manager. She also loves her wildlife and I’ve been helping her plan a trip to see puffins in recent weeks. Here’s how she got on...

My love of penguins causes me to read book upon book and watch every TV show about them, while talking non-stop about them to anyone who will listen. However this is not an animal that you can easily go and see in their natural…

My colleage Michelle who works in the RSPB Design team was clearly being tickled by something pretty special this morning when I arrived at work. Naturally, my journalistic nature meant that I went to have a nosey to see what was going on!

This fantastic film of a gannet  - just wait until it dives underwater - was taken with the aid of a camera attached to the bird. It's part of the FAME seabird tracking project which…

I hope you enjoyed the photos and story in the Summer 2012 issue of Birds on our work on Henderson Island to save the Island’s wildlife from introduced Pacific rats. Here, you can read an exclusive diary account from Operations Manager Nick Torr – and watch our film. There is a twist in the tale though - news from the Island broke just before we went to print...

Watch our film: for interviews with the team…

From hopefully saving the wildlife of one of the most remote islands on Earth from rats to amazing findings made by our scientists studying our seabirds and behind the scenes of BBC Springwatch, the May-July issue of Birds magazine is action-packed. Coming to your doormat soon...

Please let us know what you think and what you enjoyed reading by leaving a comment below.

Adrian Thomas did us proud with his feature on RSPB nature reserves in the Spring 2012 issue of Birds. I hope you will be inspired to make a trip to a reserve you haven’t explored yet, or to revisit an old favourite or two over the next few weeks.

We want you to don your outdoor gear, put on your boots, hats and gloves and get out there in the next few weeks as winter turns to spring. Based on the number of letters…

Win a copy of our new Big Garden Birdwatch book!

To be in with a chance of winning one of 10 copies of our fab new book, The Big RSPB Birdwatch (reviewed in Birds Spring 2012), simply send an e-mail, correctly naming the bird shown in silhouette below to birdsmagazine@rspb.org.uk

Make sure your email has the subject line ‘BGBW book competition’ and that your e-mail gets to us by 6 February 2012.

The …

I hope you enjoyed reading ‘Urban Birder’ David Lindo’s latest piece for Birds magazine on his encounters with bullfinches. If you haven’t read it yet, do turn to page 77 of the Spring 2012 issue.

We asked you to let us know about your own experiences with these chunky finches in the magazine, so I thought I’d share one of my experiences with bullfinches to help get things rolling.

It…

Don't want to spoil the surprise too much, but here's a little montage of some of the things you can see in the latest issue of Birds magazine. There's much more though!

Your next issue of Birds will be arriving with you in the next few days. We received the first copies here in the office today and the mailing operation will swing into action from tomorrow.

It looks like it is going to be  a very early spring this year and on many days here 'down south' it has felt like it has already arrived. I've had singing song thrushes, robins prospecting nest sites, trees and shrubs…

We're well into putting together the Summer 2012 issue of Birds at the moment.  It's a strange time actually because while I'm thinking up places to go, things to do and wildlife to look out for to tell you about in the April-July period covered by that issue, the Christmas decorations are up.

On the 7 January, the Spring issue of Birds will be on its way out to our more than one million readers and before you get…

You may have read in a previous post  about my sighting of an osprey here at The Lodge and the fact that Joel was away and missed out on a bird he really wanted to see for the first time ever. Well, said osprey stayed for more than a month and has become, I believe, the latest ever osprey seen in the UK. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Last Friday, the two of us set out to try to catch up with it in our…

We were able to slip out for a morning last week to take a trip to see our new printers. We're in the final stages of production of the next issue, which you'll receive in January just in time for Big Garden Birdwatch, so it was good to take a bit of a break and get to know a bit more about how Birds magazine is produced.

Wyndeham Peterborough is a short trip up the A1 from RSPB headquarters at The Lodge, so Joel…

My jobs to do in the garden list is currently topped by 'Clean leaves out of the pond'.

I dabbled a bit last weekend and managed to clear those nearest the surface, but I'm waiting for slightly better weather (wishful thinking, seeing today's dreary affair) to roll up my sleeves and get properly stuck in.

While I was busy leafing through the debris (sorry, bad joke), I was surprised to come…

'Behind the scenes' here at Birds magazine involves me having a great job and the opportunity to work on a nature reserve: The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire - that famous address of the Headquarters of the RSPB.

It also brings the chance to enjoy lunchtime walks surrounded by nature and the occasional privillege of something special turning up.

Minutes after posting my last blog post, news that an osprey had seen…

I hope you enjoyed our cuckoo feature in the latest Birds magazine. Thanks for your letters and e-mails, so far - and for sharing your own stories of cuckoos heard and cuckoos seen.

Derek and Sarah Niemann came back from their trip to South Uist to study cuckoos with a great selection of photographs, including some of other wildlife that they saw on their amazing trip, plus a fair few shots that made me smile!

I hope…

We’ve been receiving some good comments from Birds readers about Toby Hough’s Following the cranes feature in the latest issue. Thanks very much – we’re really pleased you enjoyed it!

It was great working closely with Toby and the other guys in the Film Unit on this piece for Birds and finding out about the work of our multiple award-winning Film Unit. It may seem like a glamorous job, but like…