The Telegraph reports a study which tagged geese and monitored their movements and density from 2006 to now has found that vastly fewer young come with adult animals when they travel to our shores. Nowhere else on earth are experts seeing such rapid changes than in the Arctic where the primary cause, greenhouse gas emissions, are instigating warmer winter temperatures and ice loss, affecting the availability of food, competition and predation of animals.
Tag Archives: birds
Seabirds face extinction if Government pursues wind farm plan, RSPB warns
The Telegraph reports the Prime Minister last week promised that Britain had “limitless” offshore wind capacity, and said a green industrial revolution with this renewable resource at its heart would create millions of jobs and avert climate change. However, conservationists have warned that an enthusiastic rolling out of offshore wind could cause our globally important seabird populations to dwindle to extinction.
Stop clearing out messy brambles to bring Britain’s rarest bird ‘back from the brink’, councils told
The Daily Telegraph reports the willow tit is the fastest-declining resident bird in the country, and one of the lowest in number, and the numbers have been in sharp freefall because their preferred habitat, shrubland, has been destroyed because of an obsession with neatness…. Government quango Natural England is also planning to compel local authorities to create more ‘untidy’ habitats for creatures including the Willow tit.
Willow tit photo by yrjö jyske under creative commons.
Pioneering technology reveals secret life of seabirds in Scotland
INEWS and BBC NEWS report a pioneering form of research has given a fresh insight into the secret night lives of the UK’s smallest seabird. The RSPB used GPS tags to collect data on the movement of storm petrels. They found the birds, which are active at night, regularly travelled up to 300 kilometres to feed in the stormy waters off Shetland.
Photo of European storm petrels by Peter Steward under creative commons.
Dark blades save birds from wind farms
The Times reports thousands of birds could be saved from being killed by wind farms by painting one blade on each turbine black, a study suggests. Eagles and other soaring birds of prey are particularly vulnerable to wind farms and they benefit most from making the blades more visible.
Photo of wind turbines by steve p2008 under creative commons.
Lockdown sees ‘most successful breeding year in decades’ for marsh harriers at Cambridge nature reserve
The Independent reports tangers see four nests of chicks successfully fledge. At least a dozen marsh harrier chicks have successfully fledged at a nature reserve in the “most successful breeding year in decades” for the species there. It is thought that lockdown helped the birds at the National Trust’s Wicken Fen Nature Reserve in Cambridgeshire.
Golden eagles breeding success at Scottish Highlands estate
The BBC reports golden eagles have bred at a “rewilding” estate in the Scottish Highlands for the first time in 40 years. An eagle pair successfully reared the chick at an artificial eyrie on the 10,000-acre Dundreggan estate.
Birdwatch: white storks return to UK after 600-year absence
The Guardian reports scheme in West Sussex leads to first chicks of the species hatching in the wild since the 15th century. The sound was both primeval yet utterly fresh and new: a time-travelling throwback to the middle ages; yet, at the same time, a portent of a brighter future for our rural landscape…But this wasn’t in France, Spain or Poland, where I have watched them in the past, but in West Sussex: at the Knepp Wildland Project.
British birds’ long-distance feats and longevity are revealed
The Guardian reports data comes from rings on birds, with more than a million fitted during 2019. The records, collected by the British Trust for Ornithology, provide insights into the remarkable migrations of birds but also the human and climatic pressures they face – and their longevity.
Red kite 30-year Chilterns project a ‘conservation success’
BBC News reports the reintroduction of red kites to an area of outstanding natural beauty 30 years ago has been a “true conservation success story”, an expert has said. Numbers of kites had declined over a 200-year period and by the 1980s they were one of only three globally-threatened species in the UK.
Thirteen young birds were brought over from Spain and released in the Chiltern Hills in July 1990.They are now “thriving”, with an estimated 1,800 UK breeding pairs.
Photo by Noel Reynolds under creative commons.