January 2019

The Probers

We’ve all watched birds pecking at trees working their way around the trunk and sticking their bills under the bark. These  are the insectivore probers, looking to extract an invertebrate morsel. The penduline-tits of Eurasia, so named because of their pendulum-shaped nests, have conical, sharply pointed bills which they use to open the stems of …

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Swallows and Tattoos

Swallows seemed to have captured people’s imaginations over the years. They are attractive, acrobatic, long distance migrants and one of the most aerial birds. Aristotle noticed them around 363 BC and stipulated (Aristotle didn’t always collect data or do proper or sufficient observations) that since swallows disappeared from Europe, specifically Greece, for the winter and …

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