Tweet Of The Day

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Michaela Strachen presents the oystercatcher. These black and white waders used to be called sea-pies because of their pied plumage, which contrasts sharply with their pink legs and long red bill. Oystercatchers don't often eat oysters. Instead they use their powerful bill to break into mussels on rocks or probe for cockles in the mud of estuaries.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Michaela Strachan presents the great black-backed gull. These gulls are the largest in the world. They are quite common around our coasts and you can see them in summer perched on a crag watching for any signs of danger or potential prey. Although they are scavengers Great Black-Backs will attack and kill other birds.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Michaela Strachen presents the ringed plover. Camouflage is crucial to ringed plovers because they lay their eggs among the pebbles and shingle of the open beach. To protect her young from a predator, the Ringed Plover will stumble away from the nest while dragging one wing on the ground.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Michaela Strachan presents the wood pigeon. One of our most widespread birds, you can hear this song all year round; just about anywhere. The young are called squabs and along with seeds and green foliage, Wood Pigeons feed their chicks with "pigeon milk", a secretion from their stomach lining.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Michaela Strachan presents the house sparrow. These birds are more commonly found living alongside us than any other British bird. Perhaps the most enterprising birds were the House Sparrows which bred below ground in a working mine at Frickley Colliery in Yorkshire.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.Michaela Strachan presents the Stonechat. Stonechats are well named: their call sounds just like two pebbles being struck together. The males are striking birds with a black head, white collar and orange chest and are about the size of a plump robin.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the red-backed shrike.Red-backed shrikes were once regular summer visitors to scrubby hillsides and heathery commons and are handsome birds; males have a grey head, reddish-brown back, black and white tail and a black bandit-mask. They were known as butcher birds from their habit of storing prey by impaling it on a thorn or a barbed-wire fence. Now they're one of our rarest breeding birds.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the little tern.Little terns are our smallest terns. You can pick them out from our other terns by their smaller size, white forehead and yellow bill with a black tip. They look flimsy and delicate but move too close to one of their colonies, and you'll unleash a tirade of grating shrieks as they try to intimidate you out of their territory.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the kestrel.The kestrel is widely distributed throughout the UK and, when hovering, is our most recognisable bird of prey. Their chestnut back and wings, and habit of holding themselves stationary in mid-air, are a unique combination; small wonder that an old name for kestrels is windhover.Produced by Brett Westwood and Sarah Blunt

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the whinchat.Whinchats are perky little summer visitors, about the size of a robin and migrate to the UK in spring from their wintering grounds south of the Sahara. They're birds of open country, preferring moors, heaths and rough ground and are often found where gorse bushes grow, which explains their common name, whin being a Scottish word for gorse.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the black-browed albatross.Although they're residents of the Antarctic seas , black-browed albatrosses have turned up in the UK many times. For a while, Albert-or Albert Ross as he was christened by birdwatchers- was one of the most well-known birds in the British Isles. He was first spotted in the gannet colony on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth in 1967. Sadly he failed to find a mate among the masses of gannets there.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the red-necked phalarope.Red-necked phalaropes are among our rarest waders, small and colourful with needle-like bills and they breed in very limited numbers on the edges of our islands. There are probably only around 20 pairs of these birds in summer in the Outer Hebrides or Shetlands.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the lesser black-backed gull.These smart gulls are charcoal grey on top and white beneath. Like herring gulls, their close relatives LBBs have moved into urban areas and now breed on flat roofs in the centre of cities. It seems almost any flat surface will do. In just three hours, one bird in Gloucester built a nest on a car roof and laid an egg in.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the dotterel.Dotterels are waders, rather like small plovers with a broad white-eye stripe. In the UK, they're almost confined as breeding birds to the Scottish Highlands. They don't tend to fly away when approached which led our ancestors to believe that they are stupid. "Dotterel" derives from the same source as "dotard" and this tameness meant that the birds were easy prey for Victorian collectors.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the sparrowhawk.A garden visit from a sparrowhawk can be an exciting affair. They're smash-and grab raiders, using bushes, hedgerows and fences as cover to take their victims by surprise. Males are blue-grey above, with a striking rusty-orange chest and are smaller than the brown females - this allows the pair to take a wide range of prey.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the spotted flycatcher.Spotted flycatchers may be rather plain-looking but they're full of character and they often nest in our gardens. The first sign that one's about may be a pale shape darting out from a tree to pluck a fly in mid-air with an audible snap of its bill.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the cirl bunting.Cirl buntings are related to yellowhammers and look rather like them, but the male cirl bunting has a black throat and a greenish chest-band.Their rattling song may evoke memories of warm dry hillsides in France or Italy. Cirl buntings are Mediterranean birds more at home in olive groves than chilly English hedgerows. Here at the north-western edge of their range, most of our cirl buntings live near the coast in south Devon where they breed in hedgerows on farmland .

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the kingfisher.The Ancient Greeks knew the kingfisher as Halcyon and believed that the female built her nest on the waves, calming the seas while she brooded her eggs: hence the expression Halcyon days, which we use now for periods of tranquillity.Kingfishers can bring in over 100 fish a day to their large broods and the resulting collection of bones and offal produces a stench that doesn't match the bird's attractive appearance.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the herring gull.Herring gulls now regularly breed inland and that's because of the way we deal with our refuse. Since the Clean Air Acts of 1956 banned the burning of refuse at rubbish tips, the birds have been able to cash in on the food that we reject: And our throwaway society has provided them a varied menu. We've also built reservoirs around our towns on which they roost, and we've provided them with flat roofs which make perfect nest sites.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. Steve Backshall presents the tree pipit.Tree pipits are small brown birds without any bright colours or distinctive features; but you can identify one from a distance when it is singing, because it has a very obvious display flight. The male bird sings from April to the end of July, launching himself from a treetop perch, then parachutes downwards like a paper dart.