Dearne Valley

OLD MOOR SPOTLIGHT 2005-03-15

Welcome to RSPB Old Moor’s new-style weekly blog. From now on we’ll be concentrating solely on what has been happening in our Dearne Valley recently, and what events we have to look forward to. I hope you like it just as much as my older, more rambling style.

There are a lot of WHOOPER SWANS heading to their Icelandic summer homes at the moment. Around 50 of them stopped in at…

SPLISH SPLASH

Here’s a picture that you don’t really want to imagine but it’s imperative in getting this week’s blog off to a relatable start. The other day I was relaxing in the bath, having a long relaxing soak in the foamy water. I’d been in long enough for my skin to resemble an elephant’s knee when it suddenly hit me; do birds need to keep clean? And if so, how do they go about it?…

FLYING HIGH AGAIN

If you’re a sports fan you might have heard that a chap called Kendrick Lamar caused a bit of a stir at the recent American Football Super Bowl during his half time performance. He performed a ‘diss track’ (I had to look it up) throwing unpleasant accusations at another rapper. Very silly but it all helps sales, I guess. A lady named Nicki Minaj is another example of this kind of confrontational rapper…

DATE NIGHT

If you’re of a romantic nature it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s been Valentine’s Day this week. If you are in a relationship and you've forgotten then this will probably be the reason that your partner has been in a grumpy mood for the last few days. It’s not too late to make amends but you’ll have to go for a big gesture this late in the game. This has been a valuable public service announcement…

… WHEN IT’S A REEDLING

The humble Blue Tit must be one of the most necessary birds in Britain. They have so many chicks, sometimes four nestfulls in a year, with up to a dozen young ‘uns in each. That’s one tired lady bird. And as long as at least two of these offspring survive then she and her mate have done their job. Their bloodline will survive for another generation. As for the others? Well these prodigious…

LONG DISTANCE RUNAROUND

My wife and I recently took a road trip through Europe. We went up through Belgium to Denmark and over the Øresund Bridge (yes, that one in the TV show) to Sweden. The return journey was through Germany and France. All told we did just short of 1,500 miles. It was an excellent little holiday and it seemed like we’d travelled a really long way. 

But had we really? Our trip took us a…

LEAVING YOUR MARK

Many years ago when the world was young and I was younger still, I went for a dawn walk in the deep snow. I live not far from RSPB Old Moor in the Dearne Valley and in those pre-EVRI warehouse days there were plenty of fields and woodlands to walk, which I did, regularly. Wind, rain and especially heavy snowfall didn’t stop me. If anything this latter made my walk more interesting as it cast a whole…

BBC's Winterwatch visit to RSPB Old Moor

'On the Search for Bittern'

by Jacob Negus-Hill, RSPB Old Moor Residential Volunteer

It’s a very cold December evening and myself - Jacob, and two other residential volunteers are sat in Old Moor’s bird monitoring hide. Tom is scanning the extensive reed bed in front of us with a thermal imaging camera, Henry is talking out loud about the behavioral patterns…

WHY DON’T DUCKS FREEZE?

You might have noticed that we’ve had some interesting weather over the last few weeks. It’s been what I would call a ‘proper’ winter with snow that doesn’t just fall overnight then disappear by lunchtime the next day. It’s actually settled, frozen and stayed around for a week or more, causing disruption to travel journeys and nature reserve opening times alike. Sorry about that last one…

A TAIL’S TALE

Imagine, if you will, a world where humans have evolved to be more like birds. We have amended our body parts to be more like them. Arms become wings. Larynx becomes pharynx. Mouth and nose become beak. Legs stay pretty much like legs though, just the two of them for walking and jumping around. We wouldn’t want to change too much in one go.

Imagine that we made all these amendments and many more…

I SPY EVOLUTION

It’s a new year. Welcome to 2025. Perhaps you’ve made some resolutions. Perhaps you’ve even kept them thus far into the year. If so, good for you. If not, don’t beat yourself up about it. You have the entire rest of your life to make yourself a better person, not just the first few days of the new year. 

Have the birds made any resolutions? Of course not. They don’t know that it…

A NEW LEAF

Today, I’m going to delve into the world of tortuously bad radio links. You know the kind of thing, like when they say, “That remix was a bit of a car crash. Speaking of which, it’s time to hear from Sally with the traffic”. Or, “That was Rihanna with ‘Umbrella’, so let’s ask Mike at the weather desk if we’ll need our brollies today.” With that in mind, please forgive me when I take a really bad literary turn…

THE GIFT OF GIVING

What do you want for Christmas? I hope you get it, especially if it’s something that will benefit others like world peace or an end to famine. I suspect though that most of us have asked Santa for something more tangible like a puppy, a pair of slippers, a Playstation or a new pair of 17” Continental Extreme Contact DWS06 Plus rear tyres for a 2019 Hyundai Kona… or is that just me?…

CH-CH-CH-CH CHANGES

• If you can’t walk well on your first attempt, you’ll probably bump down on your nappy-clad backside but still be applauded for trying. Have another go, kid, you’ll get the hang of it. 
• If you don’t get enough food, you can usually just wander over to the fridge or cupboard and find something to eat. Or there’s always Deliveroo.
• If you find yourself in a dodgy area of an…

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

I really hope that you know what a Curlew looks like. Even moreso, I hope you know what one sounds like. There are fewer sounds in British nature more evocative than the bubbling, whooping call of a Curlew on a misty morning.

But now, sadly, there is one fewer Curlew species than there was when I was born. As regular readers will know, I use ‘my lifetime’ of almost sixty years a lot to measure…

DAY BY DAY, ONE BY ONE

When I was very young I had an advent calendar. It was a cardboard sheet with little numbered windows on it, one for each day from the first to the twenty-fourth of December. Behind each of these windows was a picture relating in some way to the festive period. That could be a religious image depicting something to do with the nativity or maybe something portraying the time of year more generally…

I AM NOT A TWITCHER (PART 2)

All woodpeckers share a similar flight pattern. I talked about them in my recent blog, THE HEADBANGER’S BALL. Imagine the hand clap pattern of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and you’ve got the right idea. 

Flap-flap-gliiide.

Flap-flap-gliiide.

Flap-flap-gliiide.

We will, we will, flock you!

It was this flight pattern that I recognised while I was in France. Have I…

I AM NOT A TWITCHER

I’m going to start this week’s blog with some definitions. They’re all perfectly true. They must be, I wrote them myself.

BIRDWATCHER - Someone who watches birds for fun. They go walking in nature with their binoculars, telescopes and notebooks. Most of them are really nice people even if the general public harshly see them as one step up from trainspotters (with apologies to trainspotters…

BACK FROM THE DEAD

Brace yourself. Today’s blog is a highly technical one which also strays into areas of ethics and philosophy where I rarely dip a toe. You might want to grab a cuppa and get comfortable. But before we get to science, let’s begin with a story.

Once upon a time, there was a landmass that would soon be named North America. Bison roamed the land, cars didn’t, and the skies belonged to the birds…

THE HEADBANGERS’ BALL

Some cartoon characters from decades past have stood the test of time far greater than others. Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck remain instantly recognisable to generations of fans, as do the classic Warner Brothers stable including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the Tasmanian Devil. But can you recall Betty Boop? Her star is dimming as the years go by, as is that of Popeye the Sailor. I suspect…

Dragonfly Pond - September 2024

If you’ve been to the reserve in recent weeks, you will no doubt have noticed the clearance work around the Dragonfly Pond is you leave the path from the Visitors’ Centre.

Although it can look a bit jarring, this is an important little snapshot of some of the work which goes into maintaining a successful reserve.

Succession is the process by which nature reclaims a space left…

IMPOTENT RAGE

I recently had yet another of my ‘I’m treating myself because I’m retired and I deserve it’ holidays. I had a fantastic time but, very foolishly, I set myself a birdwatching target. This was very unlike me. If you’ve ever seen me talking about what birds are currently at RSPB Old Moor, you’ll know that I usually end by saying, “They’re around but I guarantee nothing”. The birds are on the site but there…

I WISH I’D BROUGHT MY BROLLY

One of the joys of retirement is that I can take small holidays whenever I want. I've just been away on another small break (more on that next week), so I’m writing this piece a few days in advance of publication. I can’t be 100% sure, but if the weather has been anything like predicted then the chances are that the past week would have featured some heavy precipitation. We shouldn’t…

THE WINTER KING

Once upon a time in the long-lost land where fairytales were born there was a great gathering of all the birds. They came from all corners of the world with one purpose in mind. They were to decide once and for all which of them would be crowned King of All Birds. 

After much discussion, the method they decided upon was a trial of flight, for what defines birds if not flight and feather? (We’ll ignore those…

WALK THE WALK

I’ve walked the walk many times around RSPB Old Moor but more recently I’ve been tasked with a new job. I’ve been asked to talk the talk too.

I’ve done a few guided tours around the reserve, leading groups of people who want to know more about the reserve and its wildlife. We go for a wander around the place and I tell them stories which are hopefully interesting and educational.