Redstart Day

I've probably written on here before about the fact that April 20th is, in my mind, Redstart Day. For years, on my old patch, I would see Redstarts migrating through the area, usually in a hedge at Thornton Reservoir, but occasionally at somewhere like Groby Pool.

The date already had great significance, because it was the birthday of my older sister Rebecca, who died of cancer in 2004, aged 35. And somewhere along the line, the two things became linked in my mind, and going out and seeing a Redstart became a little ritual of remembrance.

Of course, there's a self-fulfilling prophecy element to it. Migrating Redstarts favour particular habitat, so you have to go out looking for them specifically, and most years, I've probably not visited likely sites until the 20th has rolled around and jogged my memory. Still, it's a habit I can't kick.

So, when my colleague Mike Weedon found one at Ferry Meadows Country Park, just along the road from the office, this morning, I had to go to take a look. And there it was, a gloriously sharply-marked male, flitting up and down a hedgerow, and occasionally dropping down to the ground to eat a tasty morsel. A couple of Whitethroats were frequenting the same hedge, and a bit further along, a Lesser Whitethroat showed up, too. Evidence that, after the long winter and cold spring, migration is in full flow.

I wrote about this, and the miracle of migration more generally, in my book A Sky Full Of Birds, which is available online, at most bookshops, or direct from me (if you want a signed copy).

But I also talked about them for BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, recently – you can listen to it here.

Tweet of the Day: Redstart

Here's the last of the Tweets of the Day I did for BBC Radio 4 – it's the Redstart, which is an absolutely wonderful little bird in its own right, but which has also taken on some personal significance for me. I didn't see or hear one at all last year, either on passage or on the breeding grounds, so I'll have to put that right this spring.

Tweet of the Day: Wheatear

I didn't expect my second Tweet of the Day to appear quite so quickly, but the last few days have seen a trickle of Wheatears starting to appear in the UK, so it's good timing.

My only slight disappointment is that they describe it on the website as the 'English Ortolan', which is perfectly correct, but isn't the fact that everybody likes to quote concerning the name of the Wheatear.

That, of course, is that 'wheatear' is a corruption of the original Anglo-Saxon 'hvit oers', or 'white arse'. As I may have mentioned in A Sky Full Of Birds, the Anglo-Saxon's weren't much given to thinking too long or hard about the names of birds, what with so much of their time being taken up with fighting, feasting, feuding, engaging in long and convoluted religious arguments, and writing epic poetry to annoy undergraduates in the centuries to come.

Instead, they just fixed on one very obvious feature of the bird in question, and named it after that. In this case, a white rump. If you're not lucky enough to live in an upland area where they breed, now's the time to look for them as they go through on passage. They favour areas of sheep or rabbit-cropped grass, and have a habit of perching on molehills or cowpats to survey the surrounding area for tasty morsels.

Alison Brackenbury on Front Row

Poet Alison Brackenbury talks about her new collection, Skies, about 20 minutes into the programme, and reads from the book - great to hear poetry being given this sort of exposure, and lovely to hear Alison read.

Birds and People

Here's a clip from Radio 4, featuring Mark Cocker talking about Birds and People, his new book with top wildlife photographer David Tipling.

Like Birds Britannica before it (a book I've raved about on here), it looks at birds in the context of their relationship to us, and their cultural significance. It's taken the best part of a decade to put together, and I was lucky enough to be a travelling companion of Mark (in Papua New Guinea) and David (in the Philippines) when they were researching it and collecting the raw material, so I've particularly enjoyed the section on birds-of-paradise, for example.

But anyway, have a listen, then put the book on your to-buy list. You won't regret it.