Wild London

The other day, I finally got around to watching Wild London, the new David Attenborough documentary, on the BBC iPlayer. I’d been looking forward to it, and it did not disappoint. But then, David Attenborough has never done that.

Nor had he ever done a documentary about wildlife so close to home, and London has been that to Sir David for many years. The programme was, in true Attenborough style, eye-opening and entertaining in equal measure. Some of the subjects I knew a bit about (I’m well aware of urban foxes, Ring-necked Parakeets and the fact that Peregrine Falcons hunt for pigeons in Central London), others less so (a herd of deer in an East London suburb, and beavers — yes, beavers — somewhere in West London).

 

The man himself (now aged 99) continues to he surprised and at times overjoyed by the natural world, as witness his delight when handling a Peregrine chick in the Houses of Parliament and his wonder at the foxes getting so close to him in a Tottenham allotment. Part of his appeal has been the way in which he passes his enthusiasm for the natural world to the viewer. Rather like him, I get a thrill when I see a fox emerging from the bushes in my garden.

A David Attenborough documentary about wildlife in London can only, I think, serve to get people more interested in the wildlife on their doorstep. And in these troubled times in which we live, a well-produced and expertly narrated television programme exploring and celebrating wildlife close to home can only be a good thing.

2025 highlights; it’s been quite the year!

In 2025 (birding-wise), I logged over a hundred species on my travels, which took me to Canada and Spain as well as various places around Britain (southern England, mostly). East Finchley and beyond, indeed.

But for me, 2025 was quite the year for much, much more than that. 

In early October, Allison and I welcomed our son Jack into the world. He was born by surrogate in Halifax, Nova Scotia. While we were in Halifax I went for a walk around the Public Gardens (they weren’t far from the hospital). Best sighting was a Blue Jay. 

For the first two weeks of Jack’s life, home for us was a lovely rental in Ketch Harbour, overlooking the bay. We had previously stated there in June when we went out to visit our lovely surrogate and her wonderful family, who we now regard as family!

I swam out to that little jetty most mornings; for much of the rest of the day, it was inhabited by Double-crested Cormorants. Sightings in the garden alone included Blue Jays, American Goldfinches, Northern Cardinals, a Cedar Waxwing (slightly different than the Waxwings we occasionally get in London) and — definitely a first for me — an Eastern Kingbird. Slightly further afield I notched up a Raven and a Bald Eagle at Sandy Cove.

Since we got back to London, I have been taking Jack for walks around our neighbourhood and while doing so I like to tell him of the birds we’re seeing. Pigeons, crows, parakeets — I’ll point them all out. The highlight was without doubt a Sparrowhawk a couple of blocks from home which flew into a bush just as we were walking past, in unsuccessful pursuit of what was probably a Starling. Straight in, some rustling about and then straight out and away. Definitely one where we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time; this is only the third time in my life that I’ve seen that happen. 

OK, so he won’t remember that, but I will — and I can tell him about it in years to come. He’s at the start of the great adventure that is life, after all. 

In England, birding highlights have included a Barn Owl (ghostly white, seen flying through the trees while I was sitting around the camp fire at Gilwell Park), a good visit to Minsmere in July, a lovely early-morning walk on my only overnight visit to Bath and a similar early-morning walk at Newhaven in Edinburgh. 

A good year, and I begin 2026 in a spirit of happiness and optimism, and not just because of the birds. 

The Blackbird Diaries

My local Tube station has a book exchange shelf. I think that’s great, as it means I can leave recently-read books there for another commuter to read and maybe even pick up something new, although the latter is less likely as my bookshelves at home are at full capacity as it is! 

Although the presence of a book exchange shelf at East Finchley station is yet further proof that East Finchley is a wonderful place to live in, I should be honest and say that it is not the only Tube station to have one of these. However, earlier this year Transport for London (TfL) banned them from the network due to concerns over books being a potential fire hazard. Strangely, these concerns did not apply to the many free copies of Metro that are given away at every Tube station and are much more likely to be left in carriages than books. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the ban was lifted, and the East Finchley station bookshelf was reinstated (although the original wooden one did not come back, the new one being metal).

I say this because one of my bird-related books came from that very bookshelf. 

Karen Lloyd is not a writer I had previously been familiar with although she has won awards and has her own page on Wikipedia. The Blackbird Diaries is her second book; published in 2017, it is — as the subtitle states — an account of a year of wildlife observation, be it in her garden (she lives on the outskirts of Kendal), the Lake District and on trips further afield to places like Shropshire and the Isle of Mull. 

Karen Lloyd is an engaging and erudite writer whose passion for wildlife and conservation shines through on the pages of this rather lovely book. I love how she gives just as much importance to what she sees in her garden (and not just the Blackbirds!) as she does to watching for Sea Eagles in the Hebrides and the plight of the Curlew. There’s also a fair bit on the awarding of UNESCO World Heritage Site status to the Lake District (now the only National Park — in England at least — that’s also one of those) and the potential impact that this will have on both conservation efforts and tourism (what with the Lakes already being a popular tourist destination). I finished the book feeling as though I’d learned something new as well as being entertained by a talented writer of whom I would like to read more, should I ever find the time. 

When I’d finished, this book went back to where I’d got it. As I said, no room on my bookshelves, and hopefully another commuter will pick it up and enjoy it as much as I did.

The Feral Pigeon (birds of East Finchley, part 6)

A very regular sight, this one — and not just in East Finchley! Seriously, the Feral Pigeon (Columba livia) is quite literally everywhere. Look out of the window, see a bird, chances are it’s one of these. Odd, then, that when I was a kid I could never find it in my bird book; the closest species was the Rock Dove — of which Feral Pigeons are domesticated descendants — which looked the same but couldn’t have been what I was seeing, because the bird book said that they could only be found on remote Scottish coasts and islands. Not suburban London. 

For many years (perhaps influenced by the fact that they weren’t actually in the bird books), I thought that Feral Pigeons (usually just referred to as pigeons) were rather stupid, annoying birds — ‘flying rats’, I believe the nickname was. Privately, I applauded the decision to get rid of the seed-sellers on Trafalgar Square. I changed my mind on this several years ago after reading Stephen Moss’s This Birding Year, his highly engaging compendium of bird-related newspaper columns. Here’s what he wrote about pigeons:

“In fact Feral Pigeons are amazing birds, with an extraordinary history, having mutated from the wild Rock Dove to the ultimate city slicker we know today. The Feral Pigeon has been scandalously ignored both by professional ornithologists and amateur birders, with the notable exception of Eric Simms, whose book The Public Life of the Street Pigeon taught us most of what we know about them.”

(Eric Simms was before my time, but Moss is not the only current birding writer to give him a shout-out (David Lindo has done so as well). Years ago, probably because those two had both referred to him, I added his Birds of Town and Suburb to my birding library, and although I have yet to get around to actually reading it, it has survived various book-purges that have to be carried out on a periodic basis in my house!)

What Moss said got me thinking, and led to a change in how I regard these birds. When you think about it, they are indeed rather amazing. They, more than any other bird, have managed to adapt incredibly well to man-made environments so well that they are to all intents and purposes urban birds (although you can, of course, also see them in rural areas!). Originally, they were domesticated as a source of food as well as for carrying messages (their powers of navigation are remarkable), and over time many of them escaped and bred in the wild; they are known to have been breeding in London since the fourteenth century at least. Rock Doves nest (as their name implies) in holes on cliff faces, and cavities in buildings and on ledges are an entirely acceptable urban alternative. Their feral cousins have thrived, they come in all sorts of colour variations and can now be found in cities throughout the world, where we humans provide plenty of food for them even without recourse to having to buy seeds from a street-hawker specifically for that purpose. 

These days, they are of course listed in the bird books!

And they are very much evident in East Finchley, to the point where I have heard the raised flower-bed at the corner of East End Road and the High Road described as ‘Pigeon Corner’ (although the sign saying not to feed them has, last time I looked, gone). 

Such is their success that the original, ‘pure’ Rock Doves (indistinguishable from some Feral Pigeons; specifically those with the pale grey backs, dark wing bars and that green-and-purple sheen on the sides of their necks) are confined to remote areas, and even there they will probably be joined by (and therefore interbreed with) Feral Pigeons eventually; the two are the same species (although some ornithologists make a distinction by adding the word domestica to the above Latin name when referring to Feral Pigeons), a situation summed up best in that weighty and invaluable tome, Birds Britannica (of which I was delighted to find a second-hand copy of in the second-hand bookshop that adjoins the souvenir shop at Kenwood House): 

“The species’ image involves a reverse pattern to the one evident in carrion and hooded crows… Instead of being two birds with a single cultural profile, it is one species with a split personality.”

Which if anything makes them all the more fascinating! These days, when I see one I simply jot down the initials ‘FP’ in my notebook. This happens a lot! I sometimes wonder if the days when I didn’t write ‘FP’ are days when I saw one and just didn’t give it a thought, so ubiquitous are they.

Red Kites

It’s more or less impossible not to see Red Kites flying overhead while driving on the motorways to the west of London these days. These distinctive birds of prey, recognisable by their forked tails, have become a ubiquitous sight but it was not always so, for they are one of British nature’s great success stories of the past forty years. 

When I was a kid, the bird books all said that the Red Kite (Milvus milvus) had been hunted almost to extinction in Britain, and the only place you had a chance of seeing them was in the hills of central Wales where a few pairs still bred. They’d been a common sight in London in Tudor times, when they were disliked (Shakespeare used the word “kite” as an insult) but tolerated because, being primarily scavengers, they helped to keep the streets clean of carrion (dead animals). In the centuries that followed, though, they were treated as vermin and hunted accordingly, until by the twentieth century they only existed in their Welsh stronghold. 

This changed in 1989, when a rewilding project started in the Chilterns. A few birds (some from Wales, some from Scandinavia) were released — and since then, they’ve thrived, especially along the M4 and M40 corridors. The reason? The motorways, mostly; they provide a lot of roadkill, and as Red Kites eat mostly carrion, that’s why they can be seen soaring above them. 

They have since spread out along the major roads; in the past couple of months, I’ve seen them while driving along the A1 in Northumberland and the A2 in Kent. I even saw one when I went to Spain earlier this year. 

So often do I see them while driving that they have become one of my favourite birds. I have yet to see one within the North Circular, but I presume it’s only a matter of time before I do. 

Kentish Choughs…?

I first saw a Chough a few years ago, in Cornwall. These elegant members of the crow family, recognisable by their glossy black plumage and red beak and feet, started to recolonise the clifftops of Cornwall in the early twenty-first century after an absence of many years. It’s the county bird there, due in part to its association with the King Arthur legend. Officially speaking, the Chough of which I talk is known as the Red-billed Chough, and it’s pronounced “chuff”. Although I knew the bird when I saw it, I only knew it from books and had to ask someone how it is pronounced. 

The Chough also has associations with Kent. Somehow, it also became involved in the legends surrounding Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his own cathedral in 1170 — one of the most notorious events in English history, which led to Canterbury becoming a major pilgrimage destination in the Middle Ages. Some time after his murder and subsequent canonisation, Becket was retrospectively given a coat-of-arms depicting three Choughs, and this in turn has become the coat-of-arms of the City of Canterbury. 

Quite why a clergyman who was born in London and died in Kent should have a Cornish bird associated with him is unclear; according to legend, one of them is supposed to have wandered into Canterbury Cathedral shortly after the murder. 

I’ve been to Kent a few times for work over the past month, visiting Canterbury and also Dover, principally the castle as far as the latter is concerned but also taking in the National Trust’s site atop the White Cliffs, just along from the castle which is managed by English Heritage. 

The views from the White Cliffs are amazing — the Port of Dover is laid out before and below you, Dover Castle (witter the church and the Roman lighthouse distinct from the central keep) on the horizon and the prospect of seeing France (just 21 miles away) on a clear day. It’s usually windy though! In terms of birds, there are plenty of gulls (particularly Herring Gulls) and crows (particularly Jackdaws), but also Blackbirds and Robins which are quite vocal and on one occasion I spotted a male Kestrel hovering in the wind, visible from the visitor centre. 

And then there are the Choughs.

A very recent rewilding project has seen Choughs from Cornwall being reintroduced to the chalk cliffs of Kent, where they died out over two centuries ago as a result of habitat loss and persecution. With the chalk grassland having been restored in recent years through the work of organisations like the Kent Wildlife Trust and the National Trust, the habitat to support them in Kent is in place. A chick was hatched last year and managed to fledge, but was sadly lost in strong winds. Rewilding always has its ups and downs, but as was the case from my visit to Edinburgh the other month, it’s great to see that efforts are being made on a local level the country to help give nature as good a future as it can have. 

I’m told that the best place to see the Kentish Choughs is in the area between the White Cliffs car park and the castle, and although I have yet to lay eyes on them in Kent I remain optimistic that I will do so at some point. Early morning is the best time apparently, although as I’m on a schedule for my visits to Kent I’m not usually there until the afternoon! 

Swifts and Swallows

 A trip out to Wiltshire on Thursday for work took me to Lacock, the well-preserved old village that’s owned by the National Trust. While there, I looked up and saw my first Swift of 2025, followed seconds later by my first Swallow! A great start to the month of May. After a very warm April, summer is most definitely almost here.

How does this compare with previous first sightings of these wonderful summer visitors? Well, I keep track of this sort of thing, so I can say that as far as the Swifts are concerned, my first sighting of them in 2024 was 12th May (in East Finchley), compared with 11th May in 2023 (also East Finchley) and 5th May in 2022 (Burford). For Swallows, my first sighting of them last year was 28th April (at the Stonehenge visitor centre), 9th April in 2023 (East Finchley) and 28th April in 2022 (Pembroke). This must be the first time I’ve had my first sighting of both in the same place and on the same day!