Tweet of the Day

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the rook. High in the treetops buffeted by March winds, rooks are gathering twigs to build their untidy nests. The bustle of a rookery is one of the classic sounds of the UK countryside, especially in farming areas, where rooks are in their element, probing the pasture...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the peregrine. The peregrine is a truly awesome predator and a bird that we associate with wild places where, with wings flickering like knife-blades, it chases its prey in thrilling pursuits and breath-taking dives. Our city churches, cathedrals and other tall buildin...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the treecreeper. Treecreepers are common woodland birds but because their high-pitched almost whispering song, is often drowned out by the dawn chorus, they're often overlooked. The first glimpse may be a silhouette, its belly close to the bark, braced by stiff tail fe...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the nuthatch. Nuthatches are the only UK birds that can climb down a tree as fast they can go up and you'll often see them descending a trunk or hanging beneath a branch. Nuthatches are unmistakable: blue-grey above, chestnut under the tail and with a black highwayman'...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the lapwing. The lovely iridescent greens and purples of the lapwing: with its delicate crest and broad rounded wings that almost seem to twinkle in level flight, they are seen less often on our farmland today. At one time they were so common that their freckled eggs w...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the chiffchaff. Chiffchaff are small olive warblers which sing their name as they flit around hunting for insects in woods, marshes and scrubby places. Chiffchaffs are increasing in the UK and the secret of their success is their ability to weather our winters. Many st...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the blackbird. Blackbirds are thrushes and the brown female often has a few speckles on her throat to prove it. Velvety, black and shiny, the males sport an eye-ring as yellow as a spring daffodil and a bill glowing like a buttercup. Happily blackbirds aren't doing too...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Bill Oddie presents the St Kilda wren. The Island of St Kilda is not where you'd expect to see wrens but the wrens that sing along the cliffs of St Kilda are the same species as the common wren, but after 5000 years of isolation they've evolved a different song and are slightly larger and...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the wigeon. Wigeon are dabbling ducks and related to mallards and teal but unlike these birds Wigeon spend much of their time out of the water grazing waterside pastures with their short blue-grey bills. The drakes are handsome-looking birds with chestnut heads and...

John Aitchison presents the black-throated diver. Black-throated divers are strong contenders for our most beautiful bird. Their breeding plumage with a neck barcoded in white, an ebony bib and a plush grey head is dramatic. The black dagger-like bill and broad lobed feet are perfect for catching and pursuing fish, which the divers bring to their chicks in nests on the shoreline of the Scottish Lo...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the white-fronted goose. Flocks of White-Fronted Geese return each year to their favourite wintering areas, the bogs and and saltmarshes of Ireland and the Severn Estuary as well as western Scotland, although smaller flocks are found elsewhere. John Aitchison recor...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the golden pheasant. Golden pheasants are native to the mountains of China where they live in thick bamboo forest. The males are brightly-coloured; gold and scarlet, with a long tail and a cape of black and orange which they use to woo the much duller brown females...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the lesser spotted woodpecker. Lesser spotted woodpeckers are the smallest of our three woodpeckers and about the size of a house sparrow. They have horizontal white stripes across their backs, hence their old name of 'barred woodpecker'. The lesser spotted woodpec...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison tells the story of the Slavonian grebe. In winter, Slavonian Grebes, with their vermilion eyes, bright and shiny as redcurrants, fly south from Scandinavia and Iceland to spend the winter around our coasts. Their winter plumage is black, grey and white but in spring they mo...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison tells the story of the parrot crossbill. The Parrot Crossbill lives only in a few native pinewoods in Scotland. When they're at the top of pine trees a view of the Parrot Crossbill is tricky, so crossbill experts use the birds' calls to tell them apart from Common and Scott...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison tells the story of the chough. Our healthiest chough populations are in Ireland, southwest and north Wales and western Scotland. The last English stronghold was in Cornwall and Choughs feature on the Cornish coat of arms. Even here they became extinct until wild birds from...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison tells the story of the skylark. No other UK bird is capable of sustaining such a loud and complex song while hovering high above the ground, rapidly beating its wings to stay aloft. Some songs can last 20 minutes or more and their performance is likely to be as much a terri...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison tells the story of the Canada goose. These large black-necked geese with white cheeks and chinstraps are native to Canada and the USA. The first reference to them in the UK is in 1665 when English diarist, John Evelyn, records that they were in the waterfowl collection of K...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the waxwing. Waxwings are winter visitors from Russia and Scandinavia where they breed in conifer forests. They head south to feed on berries and other fruits, and if these are in short supply on the Continent, the birds flood into the UK. It happens every few year...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the long-eared owl. The low moaning hoot of a long-eared owl filters through the blackness of a pine wood. Long-eared owls are nocturnal and one of our most elusive breeding birds. They nest in conifer woods, copses and shelter-belts of trees near wide open grassla...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the dunnock. You'll often see dunnocks, or hedge sparrows, as they were once called, shuffling around under a bird table or at the bottom of a hedge. They're inconspicuous birds being mostly brown with a greyish neck and breast. They aren't, as you might imagine, c...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the wren. You'll often see the male wren, with its tail cocked jauntily, singing from a fence-post or shrub, bill wide and trembling with the effort of producing that ear-splitting territorial advertisement. It's the extrovert side of what can be an introvert bird...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. John Aitchison presents the chaffinch. The name chaffinch refers to its habit of flocking in stubble fields, often in the company of other birds, to sort through the chaff for seeds. In less tidy times when spilled grain was a regular feature in farmyards and stubble was retained for long...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Chris Packham presents the great spotted woodpecker. In late winter and early spring, brightly-coloured head-bangers are livening up the woods. The handsome Great Spotted Woodpecker really knows how to grab our attention. They don't sing but instead advertise their territories by drumming...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Chris Packham presents the avocet. With its black and white plumage, blue-grey legs and delicate upturned bill, the avocet is one of our easiest birds to identify. They are a conservation success and are now breeding in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Kent and elsewhere.