Published on 12, July, 2020
Sharing this on here because I know there are other birdwatchers around, just had a great spotted woodpecker on my bird feeders in my back garden! Had my binoculars next to me so got a good look
Here in the countryside I see a lot of birds of prey.
Incredible to watch them suddenly dive for their prey, usually a rabbit. Poor rabbits though.
I think birds look very graceful and almost prehistoric in a way.
I think they have had a bit of conservation success locally here because I see loads of Red kites now compared to a decade ago.
They're one of the big success stories for conservation in the UK. They were down to a really small population in the mid-60's in Wales having become extinct in England and Scotland, but through conservation and increased legislation on pesticides they slowly started to increase before the millennium, then had a population boom after. They kind of one of my special interests.
They really have, stable, sizeable populations through a large portion of the Midlands down through Oxfordshire and further south, as well as a good population back in Scotland, plus the Welsh population is now much larger and has recovered well from the genetic bottleneck caused by the tiny population size of mid 20th Century. I think at one point DNA analysis showed that the entire Welsh population was descendants of a single female bird.