FIRECREST TOURS : Guided Birdwatching & Wildlife Days

It's unbelievable to think that, just a couple of decades ago,  Yellow-legged Gull  ( Larus michahellis ) was, for many, an irrelevant yellow-legged 'form' of our familiar  Herring Gull  encountered only while on holiday in the Mediterranean. Following its elevation to full specific status and the popularity of gull-watching dramatically increasing throughout the 2000s, the prominence of Yellow-legged Gull as a British bird has risen greatly to where it is today. Yellow-legged Gull is a regular non-breeding visitor across the bulk of England, with notable exceptions being the far north and northwest — Yorkshire is about as far north as the species is regularly seen, and it is particularly rare on the west coast north of Cheshire. It is rather scarce and localised in its appearance in Wales, while it remains a genuinely rare species in Scotland. Its strongholds in England are across the Midlands, East Anglia and the South-East, where it may appear in considerable ...

Kittiwake by   Grahame Madge Birds and Climate Change, a new book released today (July 1, 2014), shows that recent climate change has already had a significant impact on bird populations around the world. These impacts are projected to become much larger in the future, increasing the extinction risk for many species. However, the book gives reasons for cautious optimism. We have a window of opportunity to reduce the threat that climate change poses if action is taken now. To address this, we need to reduce the future amount of climate change. Increased use of renewable energy can help, although if not deployed carefully, it can also cause unintended but significant problems to many bird species. The other type of action is to adapt existing approaches used to counter threats to bird populations so that they also deal effectively with climate change.