1/3 Ragwort is a much maligned plant yet it is really important to a whole range of insects who benefit from its nectar and pollen and for other insects it provides food for their early stages. Butterfly Conservation 🦋

Dunlins are a hidden wader gem. Dove Stone is a haven for them in the Peak District. The partnership site with @UntitedUtilities is a success with bare, eroding peatlands being restored back to a wet bog, supporting fantastic numbers of Dunlin creating a conservation miracle 🌟

A friend sent this Avocet from Central Bristol on Queens Rd outside Bristol museum. The Peregrine’s have been busy! Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

A blind otter that's managed to survive for over 2 years and raise offspring!

Willow Tits were once common at Potteric Carr and across South Yorks. Numbers have collapsed over past decade. 2 pairs left at Potteric. So this is depressing: feeders on a reserve in remaining Willow Tit habitat, boosting the very competitors that are causing high nest losses.

Didn't expect to come across frogspawn on a January trip to Scotland!

This little clump in a drainage channel near Loch Lomond yesterday, only a couple days after a Scottish village recorded the UK's warmest January day ever...

We're certainly learning here in Derbyshire that Jack Snipe are in no way the rare bird we once thought they were!

They turn up all over the place in surprising abundance. Thermal tech has revolutionised recording them.

Can you help? We’re looking for unpublished nest-camera footage, which has captured predation of eggs or chicks. Any species in any habitat will do. You will be offered co-authorship of an open-access paper in return. Please DM if interested.

Our next Thermal Birding episode will be out soon, with our friend Karoliina from Finland on how they use Thermal Technology to catch & ring Great Snipe. WOW! Catch up on previous episodes here: youtu.be/oVhjC8c2Wqk?si…

⛔️ Gruesome content!

Circle of life at a very foggy Grafham Water this AM. Cormorant suffocated on a (big) trout that it couldn’t swallow. Greater BB Gull gets a fish and Phalarcrocorax breakfast!

Green-w Teal still 9am Cambs Bird Club The Wildlife Trust for Beds, Cambs & Northants BirdGuides RareBirdAlertUK

Another record breaker from 2022 - a colour ringed House Sparrow was seen again in Caerphilly after 13 years!

With a typical lifespan of 3 years, 13 is a ripe old age!

Explore more longevity records in the 2022 Ringing Report👉bit.ly/ringing-report…

#BirdRinging #GardenBirds

Natural history notes don't hold much weight in trad academic circles, but the novelty sell of this is arguably greater than a lot of quantitative papers 🤭.. #whopper

Female Field Digger Wasp Mellinus arvensis the 'tiger of the dung pile', hunting flies this afternoon, Bovey Heath Devon Wildlife Trust

An important point here is that many useful and rare observations are never formally reported or recorded, or even submitted to County Bird Reports. We need to encourage people to get their observations recorded and bridge these knowledge gaps, as highlighted by Jamie Dunning

🐸 'The Frogolologist' 🐸

Tune into the latest episode of comedy nature podcast How many geese? Podcast with Jack Baddams & Roddy Shaw to learn more about our amphibian collection with Living Collections Supervisor for Ectotherms, Kay.

Listen here: howmanygeese.podbean.com

Nipped down to our artificial Hobby nest this morning to check on progress, two lovely chicks soon ready to fly the nest. A brilliant result for Hobbies in garden hanging baskets. Who knew?! 🤷‍♂️👌🏼Big thanks to Jason Fathers for installing with EalingWildlifeGroup.
DFManagement

Holy cow. Hooded Vulture ringed at Jbel Moussa in April (Morocco) seen on a Red Deer carcass in a river in N Spain in July. An immature bird, first seen among Egyptian Vultures in Morocco, no evidence of captive origin. Most convincing case of a wild bird reaching Europe yet?

This is probably the first ever #migration of a #swift Apus apus that is possible to follow on live view! Deployed by our team in NItaly some weeks ago. Thanks to Migration Dept., Max Planck Inst. Animal Behavior for having the opportunity of realizing this pilot with 5 #Icarus 1.3g tags.