Dearne Valley

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.

ARE YOU LOCAL?

David Attenborough. Steve Irwin. Simon King. Gordon Buchannon. Saba Douglas-Hamilton. Hans and Lotte Hass.

Depending on your age and level of interest, some of these people may be familiar to you. If you don’t know the others, try to find their work on YouTube or similar. They have all made an impact on me through their wildlife films and I suspect that you’ll be equally impressed. They were all groundbreaking…

O LUCKY MAN!

Autumn is here. You may have noticed. It seemed to fall with a huge, grey and wet ‘thud’ last week as the sun ran away, chased by gloomy clouds and earlier dusk times. Just a few weeks ago we were enjoying evening shandies in beer gardens. Now the wind is howling, the rain is pelting, the mercury is dropping and we’re digging out our big coats - even the hardiest of Yorkshire people among us. Apart from our…

RED LIGHT SPELLS DANGER

The RSPB made the national headline news recently. In case you missed it, the sad announcement was that five seabird species have been added to the ‘Red List’. I’ve talked about this ‘Red List’ in previous blogs, but I’ve never explained what it actually is, so…

The “Birds Of Conservation Concern” list is a joint effort, drawn up by a combination of nature…

FIFTY SHADES OF LEAVES

I like to think that I can recognise most of the birds that come to visit us at RSPB Old Moor in South Yorkshire’s beautiful Dearne Valley. I can make a decent stab at working out what species many of the dragon- and damselflies are as well. But trees? No, I’m sorry, I can’t tell the difference between a Poplar and a Larch. I can’t even tell you with any certainty if we have either or both of these…

TOE-TALLY PERFECT FEET

Things that you never thought I’d start a blog with #1…

“I was cutting my toenails the other day…”  Bear with me, all will become clear.

So, I was cutting my toenails the other day and I suddenly thought to myself, “Do birds have fingernails and toenails?”

I mean, it’s easy to see how my toenails are equivalent to the claws or talons of a bird’s foot. The…

RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW… IN MINIATURE

We’ve all seen this kind of grisly scene on television. First the camera calmly focuses on a Pigeon flapping along, happy in his pigeony world and blissfully ignorant of the fact that he won’t make it to the next advert break. Then…

Boom!  Suddenly a majestic Peregrine Falcon delivers plummety death from above. Our friendly but dumb Pigeon quite literally didn…

BLACK HEAD, BLACK EYE

Here at RSPB Old Moor we have historically been home to a large colony of Black-Headed Gulls. Their numbers have grown over the decades until, in the spring of 2022, we counted around 7,000 of them on the islands of our main mere. They were incredibly noisy and impossible to ignore. All seemed well. 

Shockingly, the following year the population went into free-fall with only around 200 birds recorded…

CALL ME BY MY NAME

Regular readers will know that I love to dig into my collection of old dictionaries and find alternative names that were given to bird species in the past. I do this partly because it’s fun and occasionally a folk name will raise a chuckle (for me and I hope for you readers as well), but also because it’s fascinating to see how these labels have been created to describe the bird, and how they’ve changed…

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Last week I used this blog to celebrate The Next Generation, in which I spoke about how many of Old Moor’s star species have reproduced again this year. Looking back at these Views From The Shed, I’ve also written several articles examining various stages of a bird’s life and how their senses and body parts differ quite substantially from our own.

If I’m fascinated by a bird’s…

THE NEXT GENERATION

 As we move towards the rear end of Summer a young bird’s fancy no longer turns to making baby birds. The eggs have already been made and laid. Hopefully they’ve hatched into baby birds and, with lots of parental help, should now be testing their wings in flight for the first time, either in preparation for an unimaginably long migration or to get ready for an increasingly mild Winter here in dear old…

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BIRDS GONE?

Recently I’ve been pondering over some of the frequently asked and strange questions that are posed to us at the Old Moor Welcome Desk. I looked at some of them in last week’s blog but there was a particular one that I left over as it deserves an entire article on its own.

The question is - ‘Where have all the birds gone’? Whether it’s in their garden, on nature reserves like…

WHAT DO I KNOW?

Someone recently approached me at Old Moor’s Welcome Shed and said, “I really like your blogs but I’d like to know; Are you a proper writer or do you just make them up?”

I didn’t know how to respond. Was it an insult?  Knowing the person in question asking the question, I doubt it. A compliment? Possibly. A genuine query? Most likely, but I wasn't sure at the time what he m…

JUST DOWN THE ROAD

The problem with writing blogs to a weekly schedule is that the writer (that’s me) sometimes has to assume certain events will have or have not happened by the time the reader (that’s you) actually reads the article in question. The trick is to structure the piece so that even if events don’t pan out as hoped then the reader will still find the blog interesting enough to keep going to the end. Got it…

THE BIRDS AND….

Come on, surely you’ve worked out what this week’s blog is about just from that three word title? I usually write about birds in these articles, mainly because that’s what most people come to see at RSPB Old Moor, but the site is a Nature Reserve, not just a bird reserve so we try to give homes to as many different natural species as possible, not just the birds. I’ve occasionally…

HAPPY HOLIDAYS?

If you’ve ever seen me at RSPB Old Moor’s Welcome Shed or even seen my picture on these blogs you’ll know that I usually wear my big Tilley canvas hat while volunteering. I bought my first one over 25 years ago in Canada and it’s safe to say that it’s seen better days. I’ve had two replacements since then but the original is still fit for purpose, if a bit worn, stained and generally wrecked. I rarely…

THE BALLAD OF WHITE FEATHER AND BLACK EYE

I usually arrive at RSPB Old Moor’s Welcome Shed well ahead of opening time. That’s partly because I’m conscientious and like to do a ‘professional’ job, even as a volunteer, but also because there’s a daily ritual that I love to partake in - and it involves Britain’s National Bird (as officially declared on 15 December 1960 and further strengthened by a BBC vote in 2015).…

MERLIN THE MAGICIAN

Since the birth of the internet I’ve dreamed of owning a pair of binoculars with built-in online access. My perfect but imaginary pair would allow me to look at a magnified image of a bird, take a photo of it then link to the ‘net and find out what said bird is. The stuff of science fiction, or so I thought. Now it seems that my dream is close to coming true.

For less than £100 you can…