By Angela Turner When I lived in East Sussex in southern England in the early 1990s, one of my favourite birding things to do at spring and autumn migration time was to go to the south coast between Beachy Head and Cuckmere Haven. The patches of scrub and grassland along the imposing white cliffs, together … Continue reading Signs of spring
Shifting migrant baselines
By Alexander Lees “The fall of 3rd September 1965 in Suffolk was by far the heaviest of its kind ever recorded in Britain. Axell and Pearson1, in a very detailed account of events in the county, have estimated that more than half a million birds descended along the 24 miles of coast between Sizewell and … Continue reading Shifting migrant baselines
Book : A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia
By Javier Caletrío There is a man sitting across the room in the shadow, but I know who he is. His brilliant eyes burn through shade. He tells me that if I sit still and listen then all the stories of the world will come to me. — From ‘Lives’ in Brian Daldorph’s Outcasts In … Continue reading Book : A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia
Climate refugees: The fabrication of a migration threat
By Hein de Haas In recent years, it has become popular to argue that climate change will lead to massive North-South movements of ‘climate refugees’. Concerns about climate change-induced migration have emerged in the context of debates on global warming. Without any doubt, global warming is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity, and … Continue reading Climate refugees: The fabrication of a migration threat
The Sahelian Great Green Wall: start with local solutions
By Ian Scoones & Camilla Toulmin On 11 January 2021 at the One Planet Summit, President Macron of France announced 14 billion dollars of funding for the Sahelian “Great Green Wall”. Stretching across 8000 kms and 100 million hectares, from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, the advancing deserts of the Sahara … Continue reading The Sahelian Great Green Wall: start with local solutions
Action before certainty for Africa’s European migrant birds
By Juliet A. Vickery and William M. Adams In 1974, Winstanley and his colleagues1 asked ‘Where have all the whitethroats gone?’. This followed the failure of this small migrant bird to recover from a 77% decline in the UK breeding population in 1968–1969, the suggested cause being drought-related mortality in the Sahel. Whitethroats have slowly … Continue reading Action before certainty for Africa’s European migrant birds
Homage to Reginald Ernest Moreau
By Ian Newton It seems appropriate to open this website with a few words about Reg Moreau who was the first to draw attention to the wonders of the Palearctic-Afrotropical migration system. His knowledge and ideas are summarised in two major review papers1 2 and in a book entitled ‘The Palearctic-African bird migration systems’3 which … Continue reading Homage to Reginald Ernest Moreau
Welcome
A light westerly breeze on a clear spring morning in El Saler, on the east coast of Spain, means a constant flow of migrant birds heading north over the sand dunes. On good days they pass in their thousands. Barn swallows, swifts, bee-eaters… many of them flying just over your head, so close you hear … Continue reading Welcome
Tales from the flyway 