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Welcome to the St Helens Birds and Wildlife blog. We welcome your reports from across the borough regarding all forms of wildlife. Please click on the "Report a sighting" tab if you would like to contribute to this blog.

We ask that you refrain from posting exact breeding locations of any species which may be considered scarce or vulnerable, and in particular schedule 1 species. In the context of St Helens, schedule 1 species usually means kingfisher and little ringed plover. Little ringed plover should not be reported at all on this blog between 1st May and 1st August.

Scarce or vulnerable species include but are not restricted to any species of wader, ducks other than mallard, all owls, any birds of prey, grey or yellow wagtails, grey heron, all grebes, Cetti’s warbler, water rail, willow tit, corn bunting etc. If in doubt, please ask.

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Billinge Hill Migrants&More

In all the madness of the Bonelli's Warbler its easy to forget that the following birds are good records for St Helens :)

 
 

Been a couple of ravens knocking about for a week or so, wonder if they managed to breed anywhere local?
 
 

Been a few redstarts about but they're tricky to photograph especially in early morning sun and shade!  Peter Alker managed to ring one today though watch his blog for details 
http://two-in-a-bush.blogspot.co.uk/

 
 

Spotted flycatcher have been reasonably numerous and I optimistically surmise that there may have been up to 5 individuals at any one point....?
 
 

This wheatear was a little shy and ave me the "look", this was one of 3 present this morning after singles in the previous two days.
 
 

There has also been a few butterflies knocking about too including these two firstly a meadow brown and secondly a gatekeeper (butterflies are quite hard to capture with a long lens!)
 
 

The amount of orange on a meadow brown can vary thus making them look similar to the gatekeeper but the latter is smaller and if you look carefully at the "pupils" on the black dots the meadow brown has only a single white dot.  Interestingly the gatekeepers other name is the hedge brown.

Paul B






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