Tweet of the Day

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 Sooty Shearwater. Sooty Shearwaters are rather scarce seabirds around our islands as they breed on islands off South America and the coasts of eastern Australia and New Zealand. After breeding, the shearwaters head north to feeding grou...

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 Yellow-Browed Warbler. The delicate yellow-browed warbler breeds in Siberia and winters in south-east Asia. Several hundred birds, sometimes many more, turn up each autumn anywhere between the Isles of Scilly and Shetland.

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 Crested Tit. Although crested tits are quite common in Continental Europe, they are confined in the UK to the central Highlands of Scotland. They're the only small British bird with a crest so identification shouldn't be a problem and 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 Goldcrest. Goldcrests are, by a whisker, our smallest bird - roughly nine centimetres long and the weight of a ten pence coin. They migrate in October and November from Continental Europe and some people used to believe that because the...

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 Carrion Crow. The crow is defined in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language as "a large black bird that feeds upon the carcasses of beasts." Crows have always suggested an element of foreboding. They are arch-scavengers 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 Short-eared Owl. Short-eared owls, one of our most spectacular birds of prey, are nomads, roaming over vast areas of open countryside and breeding where they find their favourite habitat of moorland or long grass.

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 Rock Dove. The birds that Woody Allen once described as "rats with wings" are for many the bane of urban life. Feral pigeons, as domesticated rock doves are known, live closely alongside us. But the same species has, over millennia, bee...

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 Jack Snipe. The song of the Jack snipe has been likened to the sound of a distant horse cantering along a road. To hear it though, you need to visit Scandinavian bogs and mires where these small waders breed. When the ice seals their no...

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 Grey Plover. The call of the grey plover across the shimmering mud-flats of an autumn estuary is a haunting sound. They feed out on open mudflats using the "run, stop, peck" method....a quick run towards any worms or shellfish which the...

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 Brambling. Bramblings are the northern equivalent of the chaffinch and breed across huge areas of Scandinavia and Russia. In autumn they migrate south in search of seeds and are particularly fond of beech-mast. The largest recorded gath...

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 Common Pheasant. The crowing of pheasants is a sound inseparable from most of the UK countryside, yet these flamboyant birds were introduced into the UK. The pheasant's coppery plumage and red face-wattles, coupled with a tail that's as...

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 Bearded Tit. Bearded Tit live in reed-beds, eat mainly reed-seeds in winter and build their nests using reed leaves and flower-heads. The males do have a flamboyant black moustache which would be the envy of any Chinese mandarin.

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 Pink-Footed Goose. To see and hear a skein of pink-footed geese as they fly from their roost on coastal mudflats to feed inland is a stirring experience. In winter the British Isles hosts well over half the global population of pinkfeet...

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 Ortolan Bunting. Ortolan Buntings are smart relatives of our yellowhammer. They're migrants which winter in Africa and small numbers of birds heading south for the winter may turn up on our coasts in autumn. But until recently in parts...

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 Eider. Eiders are northern sea-ducks perhaps most famous for the soft breast feathers with which they line their nests. These feathers were collected by eider farmers and used to fill pillows and traditional 'eider –downs'. Drake eiders...

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 Red-legged Partridge. The red-legged partridge, which are sometimes called French partridges, are native to Continental Europe and were successfully introduced to the UK as a game bird in the 18th century. Seen from a distance, crouchin...

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 Redwing. The soft thin 'seep' calls of redwings as they fly over at night are as much a part of autumn as falling leaves, damp pavements and the smoke of bonfires. In winter up to a million redwings pour into our islands, most of them f...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the serin. Serins breed just across the English Channel but they are small finches that continue to tantalize ornithologists here in the UK. Hopes were raised that this Continental finch would settle here to breed, especially if our climate became warmer. However,...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the tawny pipit. Tawny pipits have never bred in the UK in real life but they have in fiction. Released in 1944 the film, 'The Tawny Pipit', featured a pair found in an English village. Their rarity causes the village to rally round to protect the birds when the fi...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the great reed warbler. As you'd expect from their name, Great Reed Warblers are a much larger version of the Common Reed Warbler and breed in Continental Europe where their very loud song echoes around reed-beds, it can be heard up to half a kilometre away. We can...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the melodious warbler. A lemon-yellow warbler singing on a sunny Spanish hillside will be the well-named Melodious Warbler. They are slightly smaller than blackcaps, moss-green above and pale yellow below. You may occasionally see them in the UK in late summer or a...

Brett Westwood presents the aquatic warbler. The stripy aquatic warbler is streaked like the sedges it lives in and is the only globally threatened European perching bird. They sing in the marshes of central and eastern Europe where the small European population has its stronghold. Unfortunately, this specialized habitat is disappearing because of drainage, disturbance and peat extraction. They ar...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the bluethroat. This is a fine songbird and a sprightly robin-sized bird with a dazzling sapphire bib. Your best chance of seeing one is in autumn when they pass through the north or east coast on migration.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the jay. This bird is a colourful member of the crow family. In September and October you'll often see jays flying around woodland with their bills and throats crammed with acorns. Many of these they bury as winter stores but not all are retrieved by Jays and many...

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Brett Westwood presents the thrush nightingale. Even though there's no sign of the whistling crescendos that are a hallmark of its close relative, the Nightingale, the song of the thrush nightingale is an accomplished performance. They are summer visitors to Europe and prefer dense damp t...