Chiltern Birder

I had to drive from Essex to South Yorkshire last Sunday and there were a handful of interesting sights from the car. At Cambridge there was a buzzard over the road while I saw two red kites just north of Peterborough. Presumably these were from the population originating from the Rockingham Forest release. In the same area I also saw a lapwing flying across the road which was probably more exciting these days. A sign of spring was a magpie with a beakful of nesting material.

Tradionally the birds should be choosing their mates today. Maybe not strictly accurate but there is a lot of courtship activity at least audible. I hear green woodpeckers almost every morning but haven't heard a great spotted drumming at all. Curious because I see far more great spotteds during the year. The blackbirds are getting agressively territorial, there was quite a spat going on between two cock birds the other morning while a pair of wood pigeons were strutting around each other on a neighbour's chimney.

I came across a newspaper article recently by somebody commenting that in his childhood he only ever saw sparrows and starlings in the garden. My childhood recollections, on the edge of London, are much the same. We may have had the occasional robin and blackbird but I don't remember them. Certainly there was nothing exotic as a wood pigeon and I didn't see a magpie in the area until I was 17. Now in my mother's garden pigeons and magpies are more likely to be seen than sparrows and starlings. Last weekend I saw a blue tit investigating the nest box and in a garden at the end of the street we saw a fieldfare. Quite a change over the last 50 years.