Crane Spotter: Plover lover’s reward (Part 2)
Those extremely rare local visitors with the ‘golden spectacles’ I wrote about last month – the pair of smart Little Ringed Plovers – ended up staying longer than anyone expected. You may remember I...
View ArticleCrane Spotter: Spotted again at long last!
Have you ever accidentally re-found something you thought was long lost? Perhaps it was an old photo of a loved one that was slipped into a rarely used book for safe keeping and then forgotten about....
View ArticleCrane Spotter – A tale of two sittings
Main Photo: Magpie, Pica pica It was the best of times – until they turned up. Some noisy builders started work just when I was looking forward to a nice quiet summer. They arrived in late March and...
View ArticleCrane Spotter: Bob, bob, bobbing – and gone
There’s a fascinating little bird they call ‘common’ but like many others who share its first name – such as Crossbill and Gull – it isn’t. Well not around here. The Common Sandpiper, a rather...
View ArticleCrane Spotter: A big bill drops in
Ouch! Not another big bill. Hasn’t it been going mad! We’re all feeling the pinch. Seemingly everything’s been going up since Brexit/Covid/the war in Ukraine. cars, food, drink, fuel (on the rise again...
View ArticleCrane Spotter: Striking gold in the muck
Muck, muck, glorious muck! It can be a magnet for birds. The trouble is that with changing farming practices there is not so much of it around these days. Only a handful of farmers in the Cranleigh...
View ArticleCrane Spotter: An alternative Christmas ‘redbreast’
If we didn’t have a Robin as our much-celebrated Christmas bird then I can suggest a likely alternative. It’s slightly bigger and, like many Santa Claus depictions, has a plump tum. And it even carries...
View ArticleCrane Spotter – Time to make a better day
I’ve never been a Neighbours fan but as I tramped one muddy public footpath alongside a Cranleigh field last month a little bird flew overhead and reminded me of the Ozzie soap’s theme song:...
View ArticleCrane Spotter: Record local year masks a cause for concern
After my local record of 118 sightings of different bird species in 2022 I decided to try and go one better in 2023. But as 120 is a nice round number I soon decided I’d make that my target instead....
View ArticleCrane Spotter: A ‘Woodsand’– in the woods and field
Among a crowd of elephants and hippos at a watering hole somewhere in Africa right now is an elegant little wader picking its way carefully through a forest of hefty feet and hooves. The mammals will...
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