Tweet of the Day

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Twite. Twites are birds of heather moorland and crofting land - a Scottish name is "Heather lintie", as they nest in the shelter of wiry heather clumps and feed on seeds. To see twites, you'll need to visit some of our most scenic spots; the Scottish Isles...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Tree Sparrow. With its russet cap, white cheeks and smarter appearance, the tree sparrow looks like a freshly-scrubbed house sparrow. Unlike house sparrows whose sexes look very different, the male and female tree sparrows are identical.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Black-Tailed Godwit. A black-tailed godwit in its summer finery is a stunningly attractive bird, russet brown with a long orange and black bill. A few pairs of black-tailed godwits breed in the UK, most of them in damp grazing meadows such as the Ouse Wash...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Hawfinch. The Hawfinch is a large thickset finch with a massive bill. It uses this to crack open hawthorn and cherry stones as well as hornbeam seeds to get at the soft kernels inside. In doing so, it exerts a force of around 180 pounds per square inch.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Willow Tit. Willow Tits are declining rapidly in many areas: they are very similar to marsh tits, so alike in fact that no-one realised that they existed here until 1897 and their identity as a breeding bird in the UK was confirmed three years later.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Marsh Tit. The marsh tit is badly-named. It doesn't live in marshes, and is most at home in older broad-leaved woodlands. "Oak tit" might be a better name. Unlike some other tit species they don't travel far, holding and defending their woodland territorie...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Dunlin. Dunlins are a stirring sight, en masse, as their flocks twist and turn over the winter shoreline. When the tide turns they take to the air in a breath-taking aerobatic display. Around 350,000 Dunlin winter here, travelling from Scandinavia and Russ...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the pied wagtail. In winter, pied wagtails can often be seen roosting in towns and cities in large flocks. By day, pied wagtails are often obvious in fields feeding on insects but they're equally at home on our streets gleaning prey from pavements and road sur...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Linnet. Linnets gather in large flocks to feed on weed-seeds and the seeds of oilseed rape and flax left behind after harvesting. You can often identify the flocks from a distance as the birds circle over a field, by their tight formation and bouncing moti...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Common Crane. Common Cranes were extinct in the UK in the 17th century. Now, they are being re-introduced to the Somerset Levels and Moors. The aim is to release a hundred birds into the wild over five years and establish a strong population.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Golden Plover. If, among a flock of lapwings circling over a ploughed field, you see smaller birds with wings like knife-blades and bell-like calls ... these are golden plovers.

Martin Hughes-Games presents the Black-Headed Gull. Black-Headed Gulls are our commonest small gull and throughout the year you can identify them by their rather delicate flight action, red legs and the white flash on the front edge of their wings.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Siskin. Siskins are visiting our gardens as never before. These birds now breed across the UK and cash in on our love of bird-feeding. They are now regular visitors to seed dispensers of all kinds.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games tells the story of the flocks of waders which are drawn to the UK's estuaries. Britain's estuaries contain around 2,900 square kilometres of mud and sand-flats. Washed daily by the tides, these places are packed with food, molluscs, worms and crustaceans that support t...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Bar-tailed Godwit. Bar-tailed godwits are waders which occur around the globe and are now known to make the longest non-stop journey of any migratory bird.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the barnacle goose. Yapping like terriers, skeins of barnacle geese leave their roosts on mud-flats and fly inland at dawn to feed in grassy fields.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the Redshank. Redshanks spend the winter on our estuaries and wetlands, taking food from the surface of the mud and probing the ooze for creatures which live beneath.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the story of the curlew. The UK is a vital wintering ground for flocks of curlews. Some birds fly in from as far away as Belgium and Russia, probing our coastal mudflats and thrilling us with their mournful cries.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Martin Hughes-Games presents the jackdaw. Jackdaws are scavengers with a reputation for stealing shiny or glittering objects. Martin Hughes-Games tells the story of a tame jackdaw he had as a child, which became a very colourful member of the family, with her very own store of costume jew...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Wildlife Sound Recordist, Chris Watson, presents the Mourning Dove. On a November evening at the end of the last Millennium, Maire MacPhail looked through the window of her home on the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides to see an odd pigeon sitting on the garden fence. It looked t...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Wildlife Sound Recordist, Chris Watson, presents the Bobolink. You might never have heard of a Bobolink – but these birds do occur very rarely in the UK although their true home is in the grasslands of Canada and the northern states of the USA. They look like large finches but belong to t...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Wildlife Sound Recordist, Chris Watson, presents the Firecrest. Firecrests are very small birds, a mere nine centimetres long and are often confused with their much commoner cousins, goldcrests. Both have the brilliant orange or yellow crown feathers, but the firecrest embellishes these w...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Wildlife Sound Recordist, Chris Watson, presents the Shore Lark. Shore Larks are also known as horned larks because in the breeding season the male birds sprout a pair of black crown feathers which look like satanic horns, but at any time of year the adult larks are striking birds. They a...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Wildlife Sound Recordist, Chris Watson, presents the Cattle Egret. Cattle egrets were originally birds of the African savannahs but they have become one of the most successful global colonisers of any bird species. In 2008 a pair of cattle egrets made ornithological history by breeding in...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Wildlife Sound Recordist, Chris Watson, presents the Leach's Storm-Petrel. Only the most far-flung islands around our coasts provide sanctuary for Leach's Storm-Petrels, one of the most difficult of our breeding birds to see. Chris Watson tells the story of a perilous 2am climb he made to...