Countryman Diary - January 2012
Apologies if you’ve heard enough references to turtle doves over the Christmas period but I have to report that they are now the UK’s most threatened farmland bird according to the RSPB.
The migratory birds, which rely on seed-rich wildflowers and weeds in our countryside, have an important place in British folklore as well as featuring in the song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Turtle dove populations fell twenty-one per cent between 2009 and 2010. Numbers have been falling since the 1970s, and it is now estimated there are only seven turtle doves for every hundred there were in 1970; a decline even greater than other struggling farmland species.
Urgent work is underway to investigate the cause of the decline and create measures to help. The RSPB is in the middle of a three-year project working with farmers to test trial plots of seed-rich plants and monitor nearby turtle dove populations.
The overall indicator for all farmland birds has fallen again, meaning that farmland bird species are at their lowest levels since records began in 1970. The latest UK Wild Bird Indicators, published by Defra, the RSPB and the BTO, cover the period up to summer 2010 and also cover seabirds, woodland birds and wetland birds.
Starlings, yellow wagtails, lapwing and greenfinch are also under threat. While the changes to our countryside are factors in the decline of most farmland species, greenfinch numbers are falling due to the disease trichomoniasis.
Martin Harper, RSPB conservation director, says:
“These official figures once again show that farmland wildlife is struggling in our countryside. The decline of the turtle dove is particularly worrying. This is a beautiful bird which has an iconic connection with the British rural landscape and we are only now starting to discover what is causing its population to plummet so alarmingly.”
With the help of farmers, the RSPB is trying to develop ways to bring the right mix of seed-rich plants into the farmed countryside so that they can thrive and breed here once again.
All farmland birds have their own specific requirements, and there is a small army of farmers out there who are putting in place wildflower margins and skylark plots, leaving their stubble unploughed over the winter and taking care not to overgraze their land so that these species have space to forage, nest and feed their young.
“If it wasn’t for these passionate custodians of our countryside,” Martin Harper adds, “the situation would be a lot worse. But clearly more still needs to be done.
“We cannot stand by and allow the European Commission to undermine the Common Agricultural Policy’s support for environmental stewardship schemes, and we must be constantly striving to make those schemes as efficient and effective as possible.”
Declining birds due to deer?
Another recent report claims that deer may be affecting some bird species on far larger scales than previously appreciated.
The study, published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology, provides evidence that the populations of several woodland birds fare worse in areas that have high, rather than low, numbers of deer.
The research, led by Dr Stuart Newson from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), applied new methods of analysis to large national bird- and deer-monitoring data.
The study focused on eleven woodland bird species in lowland England and their relationships with three widespread and abundant deer species: muntjac, roe and fallow. The eleven bird species depend on low-density vegetation in woodland and scrub, and are therefore potentially vulnerable to browsing by deer which tend to reduce this vegetation.
It is suggested that the impacts of deer are likely to have been greatest for two species of conservation concern: the nightingale and the willow tit. These two birds have declined by fifty-four per cent and sixty-five per cent respectively over the last ten years.
Currently, deer management aimed at reducing the impacts of deer typically takes the form of excluding deer through the use of various types of fencing and/or culling of deer.
According to Dr Newson, “Our results emphasise the importance of developing co-ordinated national strategies for minimising deer impacts.”
This study is not suggesting that deer are the only, or even the main, factor driving woodland bird declines; many other factors are potentially implicated.
Nonetheless, these findings build on earlier experimental work carried out on nightingales by the BTO that has indicated deer can reduce habitat quality for this species.
New Year resolutions
I stopped making (or should that read ‘keeping’?) New Year resolutions many moons ago, but every year I still promise myself to do more walking in the countryside.
This festive period, for the first time, the Ramblers’ popular Festival of Winter Walks, starting on Christmas Eve, is offering people like me ten days worth of walking ideas … that’s more than 800 walks nationwide. To find a walk near you, go to ramblers.org.uk/
walksfinder.
Orle’s well that ends well
Reader Roy Jenkins tells me the tale of Oliver Wright who was known locally as ‘Orle’. He worked on the barges of the Trent, Ouse and Humber which, in the 1950s, carried thousands of tons of grain from the port of Hull to feed the chicken farms in Nottinghamshire.
As Orle walked into a riverside pub, Jack, the barman, greeted him with “Hevenin’, Orle. Dog not with you?”
“No, I sold ’im las’ wik. ’E’ll catch me up at Kidby Bridge.”
“’Ow many times you sold this un, Orle?”
“This’ll be fifth time, Jack. ’E’s a good un is this.”
Paul Jackson
Editor
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