Reminder:

For television viewers who have access to the TV BBC1 channel, either directly in the UK or through satellite coverage, and also perhaps those able to access BBC1 through the internet television service:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Today, Thursday 12th January 2012, TV BBC1 will be showing the third episode of the new wildlife series EARTHFLIGHT. It is scheduled for 8:00 pm GMT.  On-line URL link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 … ht_Europe/

The series concentrates almost exclusively on wild bird life and flight, including migratory travels. Each programme covers birds from a different continent.  Episodes one and two concentrated on North America and Africa respectively.  Today's episode focuses on bird life of Europe. Preview notes indicate that the birds followed on film will include storks, and also cranes, geese, starlings, gannets, sand martins, and more.  Judging by the two earlier episodes, this one too will  be worth recording!

Happy viewing!

Reminder:

For television viewers who have access to the TV BBC1 channel, either directly in the UK or through satellite coverage, and also perhaps those able to access BBC1 through the internet television service:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
Today, Thursday 26th January 2012, TV BBC1 will be showing the fifth episode of the new wildlife series EARTHFLIGHT. It is scheduled for 8:00 pm GMT.  On-line URL link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 … Australia/

The series concentrates almost exclusively on wild bird life and flight, especially migratory travels. Each programme covers birds from a different continent. Today's episode focuses on bird life of Asia and Australia.  Programme notes tell us that we shall be watching demoiselle cranes negotiating a dangerous Himalayan pass on their way to India while high-flying bar-headed geese take the fast track five miles above them; in Rajasthan, we shall see vultures, and pigeons visiting a temple dedicated solely to sacred rats; in a desert town, we can watch nine thousand cranes overwinter inside a barbed wire compound; in Australia, the programme shows lorikeets, cockatoos and budgerigars - the latter in a biggest flock ever recorded. Then we'll move on to China and Japan, where the programme follows swallows, swifts, Japanese cranes, white-tailed eagles and Steller's eagles.

Judging by the earlier episodes, this one too will  be worth recording!
Remember, if you missed it, you can still see it later on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 … Australia/  - provided you have paid access to that service.

Happy viewing!

6th May 2012

A while ago we wrote in this thread (12/01/2012) about the pioneering project designed by scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to satellite-track tagged wild cuckoos in order to map their migration routes to and from Africa.  Yesterday,  this year's initial results have been announced in the BBC online nature magazine, "BBC Nature News".  So far, two of the tagged male birds, Lyster and Chris, have returned to Britain,  one of them (Lyster) remarkably, to an area within 10 miles from where he had left last autumn.

Sadly, Clement, the young male cuckoo which "showcased" the project,  has been lost in Cameroon on his return journey.

Nevertheless, Phil Atkinson, head of international research at the BTO, who personally spotted Lyster, the first returning cuckoo, in the Norfolk Broads on Tuesday, is more than delighted with the progress of the project. The first-ever accurate cuckoo migration map which has been drawn thanks to the satellite tracking devices has now revealed, for the first time, exactly where the birds spend the winter and just how brief is the time that these so-called British birds actually spend in Britain.

More on this in the following link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17895997

A Record-Breaking Bird Flies Sixteen Thousand Miles in a Round Trip Between Britain and South America

In a longest-recorded migratory journey for a European breeding bird, a red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus) was recently found to travel a remarkable 16,000 miles (25,800 kilometres) in a round-trip flight between Shetland and Peru. 

This phalarope, a small, delicate wader that breeds in the Arctic regions of North America and Eurasia is a migratory bird, and, unusually for a wader, it normally overwinters at sea on tropical oceans.  It is one of Britain’s rarest birds, with only about 15 nesting sites in the Shetlands and the Western Isles. The birds arrive in Scotland in mid to late May and mate and raise their young before setting off again in July or August. In a reversal of gender roles, the more brightly coloured female often leaves the male sitting on the eggs while she looks for new mates. 
 
It has been thought that after breeding in Scotland, the birds set off eastwards to winter in the Arabian sea.  But a tracking device weighing less than a paperclip and worn like a backpack has now revealed they go somewhere else entirely.  After leaving the Shetlands, a bird wearing the sensor headed directly to the west across the north Atlantic, via Iceland and Greenland, then down the eastern seaboard of North America into the Caribbean. He then crossed into the Pacific where he wintered in the warm waters of Ecuador and Peru before returning back by more or less the same route. 

This incredible journey is the longest recorded for a bird that breeds in Europe, and one of the world’s great migrations, especially for such a small, delicate bird. A single red-necked phalarope normally weighs less than a packet of crisps.

Malcolm Smith of the RSPB said: ‘To think this bird, which is smaller than a starling, can undertake such an arduous journey and return safely to Shetland is truly extraordinary.’   

Despite their marathon migration the red-necked phalarope does not hold the world record.  This is reserved for the arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea), which travels a colossal 43,000 miles in a round trip between the two poles. That makes it the ultimate long-distance traveller. 

(based on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25667007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … z2qWPI6HXq )