Tweet Of The Day

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the cirl bunting.Cirl buntings are related to yellowhammers and look rather like them, but the male cirl bunting has a black throat and a greenish chest-band.Their rattling song may evoke memories of warm dry hillsides in France or Italy. Cirl buntings are Mediterranean birds more at home in olive groves than chilly English hedgerows. Here at the north-western edge of their range, most of our cirl buntings live near the coast in south Devon where they breed in hedgerows on farmland .

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the kingfisher.The Ancient Greeks knew the kingfisher as Halcyon and believed that the female built her nest on the waves, calming the seas while she brooded her eggs: hence the expression Halcyon days, which we use now for periods of tranquillity.Kingfishers can bring in over 100 fish a day to their large broods and the resulting collection of bones and offal produces a stench that doesn't match the bird's attractive appearance.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the herring gull.Herring gulls now regularly breed inland and that's because of the way we deal with our refuse. Since the Clean Air Acts of 1956 banned the burning of refuse at rubbish tips, the birds have been able to cash in on the food that we reject: And our throwaway society has provided them a varied menu. We've also built reservoirs around our towns on which they roost, and we've provided them with flat roofs which make perfect nest sites.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the tree pipit.Tree pipits are small brown birds without any bright colours or distinctive features; but you can identify one from a distance when it is singing, because it has a very obvious display flight. The male bird sings from April to the end of July, launching himself from a treetop perch, then parachutes downwards like a paper dart.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the coal tit.Coal tits often visit our bird-tables but don't hang around. They dart off with food to hide it in crevices and crannies. What the bird is doing is hiding or cache-ing food to be eaten later. Coal tits are smaller than their relatives and have lower fat reserves, so they store food to compensate for any future shortages. In the winter they store seeds and in summer they will hide small insects.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the house martin.House martins are often confused with swallows , but look shorter-tailed and lack the rusty throats. They're compact birds which build their with pellets of mud under our eaves and although they're so familiar to us in summer, we still can't be certain where they spend the winter. Ornithologists believe that they may spend our winter catching insects high over African rainforests.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the corncrake.The rasping repeated call of the corncrake was once a familiar sound of hay meadows throughout the UK. However these birds were no match for mechanical mowers which destroyed their nests and they're now mainly found in the north and west where conservation efforts are bringing them back to lush meadows and crofts.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Steve Backshall presents the osprey. Ospreys are fish-eaters and the sight of one of these majestic birds plunging feet first to catch its prey is a sight to cherish. The return of the ospreys is one of the great UK conservation stories. After extinction through egg-collecting and shooting in the 19th and early 20th centuries, birds returned in the 1950s and have responded well to protection.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Steve Backshall presents the common buzzard. Common buzzards are stocky birds of prey which often soar on upturned wings. In Scotland they're sometimes called the tourists' eagle because of many golden eagles claimed by hopeful visitors. Common buzzards are increasing their range and numbers and range in the UK and their soaring flight over their territories is now a regular sight nearly everywhere.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Steve Backshall presents the sandwich tern. Sandwich terns are the UK's largest breeding terns and have shaggy black crests and a black bill with a yellow tip. They live in colonies on shingle or sandy beaches and were first described from birds seen in Sandwich in the 1780s by William Boys, a Kentish surgeon.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Steve Backshall presents the turtle dove. The soft purring song of the turtle Doves are mentioned in the Song of Solomon in the Bible: " The voice of the turtle is heard in our land". They are migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and are now a treat to see here in the UK where they breed in farmland and scrub where they can find weed seeds for their growing young.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the yellowhammer. The yellowhammer is a member of the bunting family and its name comes from "ammer" the German for bunting. It's one of the few British birds to have its song transcribed into words and seems to be saying ..a little bit of bread and no cheese".

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Steve Backshall begins May with the corn bunting. Corn buntings may be plain-looking birds which sing their scratchy songs from cornfields, but their private lives are a colourful affair and a single male bird may have up to 18 partners.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Reed Warbler. Reed warblers are summer visitors from Africa, one of the few long-distance migrants that are faring well in northern Europe - possibly because we're creating more gravel pits and conservation reedbeds.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Marsh Warbler. Marsh warblers are astonishing mimics and when you hear one singing you could be forgiven for thinking that there's a flock of different species in the bush.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Savi's Warbler. Count yourself very lucky if you hear the buzzing song of a Savi's Warbler, these are very rare birds indeed, especially breeding pairs and the nests are almost impossible to find, so their song is the best clue that they're about.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Common Sandpiper. This bird can look slightly pot-bellied as it bobs nervously on the edge of an upland lake or on a midstream boulder. Get too close though and it will be off - flickering low over the surface on bowed wings.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Little Egret. The colonisation of the UK by these small brilliant-white herons with black bills and yellow feet, has astonished ornithologists because of its speed.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Wryneck. These strange birds - with feathers intricately barred and blotched in browns, blacks, fawns and creams - are so-called because of their habit of writhing their heads round at seemingly impossible angles.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Cormorant. Although cormorants are common on rocky and estuarine shores, increasingly they are breeding inland in tree colonies - where branches whitened by their droppings are a giveaway in summer.