The green linnet, alias the greenfinch, deserves such lavish praise; the male, in his green array, has bright-yellow wing-bars and tail-fringes.

Wind farms out a sea are probably less harmful to wildlife than land-based ones.

Willie wagtail has taken up residence in a supermarket in England (Ken Kendall, Irish Examiner, September 13).

STAY OF EXECUTION

A bird which earned a last minute reprieve after supermarket chain Tesco’s plans to shoot it caused a Twitter backlash in Britain has been caught and released.

Supermarket chain Tesco has been forced to rethink a plan to hire a sniper to shoot a protected bird which has been flying around one of its stores.

ACCORDING to Waterbirds in the UK 2012/13, a report just published by the British Trust for Ornithology, the populations of some duck and wader species are declining. Birds don’t recognise political boundaries and wetland ones are great travellers.

Ornithologists dislike the use of ‘birdbrain’ as shorthand for stupid, because our feathered friends are very intelligent, says Rita de Brun. The British Trust for Ornithology has called on the British public to take part in a national survey on bird intelligence

The whitethroats numbers have been affected by climate change in its winter home in the Sahel.

DID three months of fierce winter storms affect our wildlife? Millions of trees were felled and swathes of farmland inundated.

MANY people stop feeding the wild birds in their garden during the breeding season. The theory is it’s possible that young birds could choke on large seeds or pieces of nut that their parents bring back to them from bird feeders.

COAL tits are visiting my garden.

THE cuckoo is in trouble.

THEY’RE clocking up thousands of miles as they complete their journey from England to Africa — and five migrating cuckoos fitted with tiny tracking devices are providing new information which could help explain a sharp decline in the number of the birds in Britain, scientists said Friday.

THE British Trust for Ornithology, normally called the BTO, publishes a Garden Bird Feeding Survey and it makes for interesting reading.

THE songbirds of Europe are well studied, but some aspects of their lives are shrouded in mystery. Most small birds migrate at night, when we can’t see them; their flocks appear on radar screens.

One of the largest ever surveys of birds in this country begins this week.

RARELY has bird life in Ireland been receiving such publicity. Eagles, kites and hen harriers are all making headlines and attention could now be turning to the plight of songbirds which are facing a relatively new threat.

A NOTE from the British Trust for Ornithology (the ‘BTO’) says that a sparrowhawk, ringed by me, has been found in Malahide.

A WEEKEND to show how a green future could look takes place this Saturday and Sunday in Co Down where sustainable and environmentally friendly living will be on the agenda.

A HUGE bird project is about to get under way and it’s one in which readers of the Outdoors page can participate.

A HUGE bird project is about to get under way and it’s one in which readers of the Outdoors page can participate.

THE area of North County Dublin where I live used to be farmed.

TWO RECENT studies, totally unconnected with each other, suggest mobile phones may be having a negative effect on wildlife. At first sight the notion seems a bit bizarre, or even paranoid, but the findings are interesting.

Two recent studies, totally unconnected from each other, suggest that mobile phones may be having a negative effect on wildlife.

I RINGED four blackcaps in the last month. What’s so remarkable about that you may ask; blackcaps are common birds nowadays.

PEOPLE DON’T like starlings. They are noisy, aggressive and greedy. Their nests, often in the roofs of houses, are a total mess and they gobble up everything on the bird table, leaving nothing for the smaller birds.

IF THE Keep Britain Tidy campaigners are to be believed, there has been a 20% rise in the number of rats on our sister island.

ADULT CUCKOOS have left our shores and soon their youngsters will bid farewell to their devoted foster parents and head for Africa.

I LIVE beside the sea, where the arrival of the seasons is announced on the avian public address system.

The blackbird was today named as the nation’s early bird in a survey of more than 6,000 gardens across Ireland and Britain.