This web site now has three series of posts on Thursdays: Meet the Blog Roll, Frugal Basics, and Dinner for Two for Less than Ten Dollars. Which comes next? You decide which to sponsor. All three series are sponsored by readers.
For today, it is Meet the Blog Roll: Ann Mackie Miller, whose blog is "British Birds" at
It's not been updated recently because it's pretty well filled. This blog gave me the mental model for my butterfly posts--only it consists only of bird articles, no link logs or book reviews or other fun stuff found here. Each article could be a chapter in a field guide, with clear, beautiful bird photos and facts about the birds' lives. If you are not British and have ever seen a reference to a bird in a British book and wondered what kind of bird the author meant, this web site will show you.
As with butterflies, several British species are found on both sides of the Channel and a few are found on both sides of the Atlantic. Many are considered close relatives of eastern North American species, having evolved only slight differences; some might be able to hybridize. Some, like the Mute Swan, Starling, and English Sparrow, were intentionally imported from Britain to North America. Some, like the Robin, aren't related, don't look much alike, and have similar names because British immigrants seem to have wanted to give familiar names to some sort of creature they found in North America.
The British Birds blog may be more like a book-in-progress than like a typical blog, but those who enjoy birds will enjoy reading it. Its posts never really go out of date.
Some favorites:
Great Blue Herons became the icon for the Chesapeake Bay and efforts to keep the water that flow into it clean. So they are among my favorite birds--in my top hundred list, anyway. We used to think they were solitary creatures, only ever seen by ones. We've learned, as some specific kinds of pollution have been reduced, that herons are as solitary as they need to be. They are obligate carnivores who are built to catch prey in what seems a peculiar, inefficient way, so they spread themselves out enough during the day that each bird can find enough fish and shore creatures to survive. At the end of the day, family groups gather in a favorite tree. It has to be a large tree, for herons to roost in it, and as it will probably be grossly over-fertilized it's unlikely to last long. Anyway they "talk" to one another, and sometimes even "kiss" with their long sharp bills. North America's Great Blue Herons are different from Britain's Grey Herons and the Caribbean Islands' Cocoy Herons, but their ancestors may have been one species and, conceivably, their descendants might some day be considered one speies again.
Same species, and what adorable close-ups of the fluffy little goslings! Canada geese are fun to watch. They may all look alike to humans, but they clearly relate to one another as individuals. Couples bond and mate for life; extended family groups divide into nuclear family units while raising their young, then merge back into big flocks in winter. Some migrate and some don't. The return of the migrating family members to a favorite lake is always an occasion of much happy excitement. During the winter younger birds pair off. A flock of Canada geese often picks up a few geese of different species, and these become part of the extended family. These bold birds don't seem to mind being watched by humans as their babies grow up, but if you come too close they'll "goose" your knees. From their perspective, a golf course is a sad waste of a nice lake, to be discouraged by every means possible. They are, however, pretty good mowers and weeders of ordinary grassy fields.
And, of course...
It's not the little birds' fault that a name intended to sound like a noisee they make happened to sound like "teat" in English. As a result Internet wits are always using "tit pics!" as a come-on and displaying pictures of small gray birds. Britain has a few different species of tits. North America has one, in the West; in most places we have to get by with chickadees, nuthatches, and juncos. Tits not only don't produce milk, but consume it. Britain's blue tits worked out a way to pick the tops off British milk bottles in the mid-twentieth century.
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