Tweet of the Day

Latest Episodes:

Wader roost Nov 08, 2013

Show notes

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 thousands of waders.

Bar-tailed Godwit Nov 07, 2013

Show notes

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.

Barnacle Goose Nov 06, 2013

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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.

Redshank Nov 05, 2013

Show notes

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.

Curlew Nov 04, 2013

Show notes

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.

Jackdaw Nov 01, 2013

Show notes

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 jewellery to play with.

Mourning Dove Oct 31, 2013

Show notes

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 tired, as well it might have done, for it turned out to be only the second mourning dove to occur naturally in the British Isles.

The sound archive recording of the mourning dove featured in this programme was sourced from : Andrew Spencer, XC109033. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/109033.

Bobolink Oct 30, 2013

Show notes

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 the family of New World blackbirds. Because the breeding males have black and white plumage they are sometimes called 'skunk blackbirds'. The sound archive recording of the bobolink featured in this programme was sourced from The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Firecrest Oct 29, 2013

Show notes

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 with black eyestripes, dazzling white eyebrows and golden patches on the sides of its neck ... a jewel of a bird.

Shore Lark Oct 28, 2013

Show notes

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 are slightly smaller than a skylark but with a yellow face, a black moustache and a black band on the chest.

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