The Manchester Birder

Western Reef Heron, said the message on my phone.  I was, to put it mildly, surprised.  I had logged out of social media, blog, listing software and websites and BirdGuides a month earlier, putting birding WhatsApps on mute, and withdrawing into my own company for a little while.  So when several people of my acquaintance wanted me to know there was a first for Britain 80 miles from home their messages built up until not even I could ignore the deluge. Western Reef Heron, said BirdGuides when I logged back in.  Three exclamation marks to tell me it was a serious rarity.  Seen in Caernarfon, a favourite place of mine full of friendly people, good birders, great scenery and the potential for close encounters with wildlife.  I pondered. My withdrawal wasn't a mistake, or a whim, or a tantrum.  I needed a break.  Was I ready to rejoin the hobby?  Was I ready to socialise more broadly?  Was I refreshed enough to want to go birding - not just ...

Working from home is littered with potential distractions and temptations, and all three of these birds in the last week have been species that have caused disruption in that I have either started late, finished early, or woken up late as a result of staying out to find them! Osprey as a species feels like it has hit a critical mass in recent years, with colonisation occurring in lots of southern England, the midlands, as well as Northumberland, parts of Wales, south Cumbria, and of course the Scottish traditional strongholds. The number of non-breeding birds that seem to have lingered in Lancashire over the last couple of summers is good news, and especially seeing birds coming back to the same stretches of the Ribble means there is potential for breeding on the plethora of reservoirs and lakes to be found in east Lancashire, north Manchester and even where I am in the flat plains of west Manchester and north Cheshire.  Reports of an Osprey lingering at Pennington Flash across a w...

As a birder, I often struggle with my eyesight.  I wear very strong prescription glasses, and this makes birding in rain or humidity a proper pain in the neck.  Droplets on my glasses and steaming up when using binoculars are frustrating.  I find a change of focal length disorientating and difficult to adapt to; moving between binoculars and naked eye, or telescope to camera, or in particular from phone to optics leaves my vision momentarily fuzzy and blurred.  So I often depend on my ears when I'm birding.  I'm not brilliant at instant ID when it comes to bird song, but I usually use birds calling as a way of homing in on them and confirming identification visually.  I don't know how I'd manage to go birding without that sense, given how slow my eyes are to focus.   Positively accessible The Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell Labs has real application here, giving instant access to at least an approximation of this sense that a hearing impaired pers...

As so many of my blogs begin, my baseline for birding was set during the 1990s.  Little Egret was a twitchable rarity.  Cetti's Warbler was an exotic species only found in famous locations in Norfolk.  Marsh Harrier was a summer migrant to Leighton Moss.  There were six (6) Red Kites in the whole of the UK.  A single pair of Ospreys bred at Loch Garten.  England's last breeding Golden Eagles occupied a crag at Haweswater.  Avocet was rare outside of East Anglia, Black-necked Grebe was vanishingly uncommon and it was a fifty mile each way trip to see birds like Peregrine and Raven from my Manchester base. I sometimes feel I'm stuck in that time, comparing all my sightings to how rare or scarce or common birds were in the mid to late 1990s.  I get excited about birds that most people dismiss.  Young birders of my acquaintance never really react to a Cetti's Warbler bursting into song, while I remember seeing my first about six years ago and bei...

My friend passed me his thermal imager on a survey of Jack Snipe on patch in the winter just gone, but I struggled to use it, finding the flares of white light too distracting and the sense of scale confusing.  It had been a very successful survey.  Between us we found 27 Jack Snipe and over 50 Common Snipe in one bog.  He used the thermal, and I did a binocular scan.  It wasn't even a close competition: he found all 27 Jacks and over 40 of the Commons.  That thermal was a game changer, for someone with the ability to use it. When I was 14 I was part of a large and active group of birders of all ages which exposed me to two things that were good for my development as a birder: experience, and a broad church of opinion.  All forms of birders were there, and I do mean all .  Strict patchers, full-blown twitchers, bird racers, conservation experts, even former egg-collectors turned real birders were part of a patchwork of views and opinions that helped me...

What.  A.  Month!  April 2026, I'm sad to see you go!  The sheer amount of brilliant migration stories locally and further afield has meant a busy month and I feel a kind of joy from beautiful weather and a combination of ranging out and seeing brilliant species close to home. Local birding A remarkable day on the moors seeing a flock of 16 Ring Ouzels before finding returning Pied Flycatcher and a male Redstart will be my high-water mark for local spring migration for years to come.  Swallows, Yellow Wagtails, Sand and House Martins, a single Swift, Whitethroat, Grasshopper Warbler, Common Terns, Cuckoo and the most showy Lesser Whitethroats I've ever seen completed a local line up of brilliant birds.  It won't be long before Wood Warbler, Nightjar and Quail grace the local area and I can't wait for those warm nights in May listening to the two-stroke engine calls resound over heath.  I have been guilty of struggling with my local area on occasions ov...