Watching the birds around you

Colour is the last thing an experienced birder looks at

Beginners reach for the field guide's colour plates and lose. Light changes colour, plumage changes with season and age, and half of what lands in a garden is brown. What does not change is the shape of the bill, the proportion of the tail, the way the bird moves along a branch and the height at which it feeds.

Animal Hub Planet is built around that idea, and around two related subjects: feeding garden birds without creating a disease hotspot, and what research has established about how migration is triggered and steered. Sources are named at the end of every article.

Latest articles

How to Start Birdwatching: Field Marks Before BinocularsSize, shape, behaviour and habitat identify more birds than plumage does. A practical method for beginners, no equipment required.

Feeding Garden Birds: What Works, What Wastes MoneyFeeder types, seed quality, placement and hygiene. How to attract more species to a garden and avoid the common mistakes.

Bird Migration: How They Know When, Where and How FarStar maps, magnetic sense, fat reserves and inherited routes. What science understands about one of nature's hardest journeys.

A note on where you are reading this

This site is read in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere, and bird communities differ completely between them. Where a statement only holds for one region, the article says so. If something here does not match what you see out of your window, that may be geography rather than error — but tell us anyway, through the contact page. How we handle that is in the editorial policy.