Author: Sara Taylor

First published May 2018

As recent joiners to the British Trust for Ornithology’s (BTO), national garden birds recording scheme, we receive their quarterly bulletins and the latest spring edition had some particularly interesting articles and information. This survey requires participants to submit weekly records of the birds in their gardens (actually in it, not flying over!) and has been going since the 1970’s, peaking with over 1500 people taking part across the UK, making it one of the biggest citizen science projects in the UK.

One of the articles in the current edition highlighted the problems of increased risk of diseases posed by garden bird feeders and indeed it was the garden survey that first drew attention to the fall in greenfinch numbers and the rise in Trichomonosis, a disease that particularly, though not exclusively, affects this species. Every issue publishes the results of each the quarters and this one looked at the October to December records for 2017. The results reflect the short-term factors that might affect a particular quarter such as unusual weather, the success or otherwise of breeding or a shortage or glut of natural food. These results picked up on the hawfinch invasion of last Autumn as over 3% of gardens recorded this species in their garden, ten times more than the usual count.

However, the article that really caught my eye was summary of a newly published book, The Birds at My Table: Why We Feed Wild Birds and Why it Matters by Darryl Jones. A study revealed that we provide 60,000 tonnes of bird seed annually, enough to feed the actual population of blue tits alone, 5 times over! Feeding birds in our gardens has grown enormously over the last 30 years and the variety of food we put out is now is very varied. Also, views have changed about feeding birds all the year round, as initially it was thought not to feed in the summer, but consensus is now that this is okay. Personally, I don’t put food out in the summer, preferring that adult birds should still provide their chicks with natural food. When it comes to the winter though, I like to put out a lot of food, believing like nearly everyone else, that natural foods are scarce and becoming scarcer, they simply need the food we put out to survive the colder months.

The author challenges this idea though. He cites that evidence shows that for most individual birds, the feeder food they consume is actually a very small part of their diet and that, except in extreme conditions, they don’t need the food we provide, they will simply go elsewhere. They are wild creatures that choose to visit our feeders on their own terms, perhaps because it just the easier way of finding dinner.

Without reading the whole book, I don’t yet know the evidence he uses to support this proposition, it’s encouraging me to go out and buy it though. It certainly challenges my ideas that that feeding birds, particularly in winter, that we are all helping millions of birds to survive this season. I certainly need convincing otherwise and would like to know if a model has been looked at to predict what would happen to our birds should all our garden feeding was to cease.

In the meantime, I and hopefully you, will carry on feeding the birds until ensuring that they have a greater chance of surviving the harsh realities of living in an increasingly hostile environment.

Mike Russell

First published January 2019

We all love robins don’t we, they brighten up dull winter days, they accompany us while we garden, they adorn many a Christmas card, they are officially in fact the nations favourite bird. Well, if you love your robin, as I love mine, you might find the following a bit unsettling.

One morning recently while just enjoying the birds in the garden over a cup of coffee I watched a robin on the patio for a full five minutes or more as it digested a worm. It was a big worm, still very much alive, wriggling frantically to try and escape the small but lethal beak of the robin. The bird at first just kept picking the worm up, shaking it vigorously then dropping it. After a while it decided that it was time to eat and snipped off a chunk of worm, so we then had two wriggling worms on the floor and the robin picked up the smaller potion and swallowed it.

Meanwhile the remaining bit of worm tried to escape but to no avail, the robin having digested the first bit, snipped off another bit and then swallowed it. This carried on and I think the robin had in the end eaten four separate sections each of them still alive, the whole process taking over five minutes in total. It was a real nature in the raw moment.

Now, if anyone watching this episode would may be slightly unsettled by this episode but probably would not bother to write to a conservation organisation or tweet or put on Facebook a message about how terrible it was and that we should cull or control the robin population as they are such terrible birds.

Yet this is what happens quite frequently if people see a sparrowhawk take a small bird from their feeding station or garden. Over the years while working for the Sussex Wildlife Trust I had a number of conversations with indignant people bemoaning that a sparrowhawk had killed an eaten a blue tit, great or even a robin in front of them. I distinctly remember one person demand angrily “Your” sparrowhawk has eaten” my” blue tit, What are you going to do about it? There is currently a very small but vociferous group of people who claim that sparrowhawks are a significant cause in the decline in the small garden bird population, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that this is not the case. And they want their legal protection removed.

Basically, we humans love our birds but we don’t love worms or caterpillars or by and large, most other insects. No one is championing the cause of worms, yet the worm is essential to the ecology of the soil, but also provides the major source protein for numerous birds, animals and amphibians. In the same way, small birds provide the protein needed for the larger predators such as the sparrowhawk; it is all part of the food chain that sustains life on earth. Someone who once had a lot of time on their hands, calculated that in one year if all the great tits from all the broods survived to breed the next year and this happened in subsequent years then within a decade, we will all be knee deep in great tits!

Like it or not, blue tits, great tits or even robins are an essential part of the food chain, as are worms and provided that there is a properly function ecosystems then nature will sort it all out so that everything flourishes at the levels that they need to.

Mike Russell

First published April 2018

I know I have written about migration before, but it is something that is just so fascinating that I’m not going to apologise for re-visiting the subject again, especially as having just come back from a trip to Morocco, with some of my Henfield Birdwatch colleagues, and experienced migration at first hand.

While on the edge of the desert we were in the gardens of one of the hotels we were staying at and amongst the vegetation a small bird was moving around the base of the trees and shrubs that was very hard to see, but eventually showed itself to be a nightingale. For us ‘Henfieldites’, this was rather poignant as we are very much associated with the nightingale population within our parish. Now, we had no way of knowing whether this little bird was going to end up around Henfield, but the romantic souls that we are, hoped that it might do!

But, seeing this bird just reminded us that what an extremely difficult and hazardous journey millions of birds take to get to their northern hemisphere breeding grounds, having spent the summer on the African continent. Over the last 10 years, fitting a tiny satellite tag to nightingales has enabled researchers and conservationists to find out where our nightingales spend the winter and what routes they take both on their spring and autumn migrations. We now know that nightingales spend the winter months in West Africa, mainly in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau and it is only a relatively short time that they are there. Most of the year they are actually on the move.

One of the first nightingales that was fitted with one of geo-satellites while at their nest site in East Anglia on the 12^th May 2010 and then, following breeding, it left the site on the 25^th July, crossing the channel a week later. The satellite transmits regular signals on a regular basis so that the birds’ journey was tracked down to its’ wintering grounds at which it didn’t arrive at until mid-December, so the journey took nearly 5 months. It then left its wintering grounds in Senegal on the return journey early February and arrived back within 50 metres of where it was originally tagged in early May the following year. This tiny bird, about the size of a robin, travelled about 6000 miles, spending over 9 months moving between its wintering and breeding grounds. That journey took it through various habitats, desert, crossing seas, barren farmland as well as sudden inclement weather, facing dangers as predators and even hunters, a truly remarkable achievement.

Other species we came across in Morocco that were making their way northwards that mat end up in our parish included many swallows, which may well have started their journeys right down in South Africa. A few house martins passed overhead as well as swifts and a couple of wheatears.

Seeing some of these familiar birds in unusual habitats and situations is actually quite humbling. We just got an aircraft and in about 4 hours we were in Morocco, whereas for these birds their journey is full of danger and a big number of them never actually make it.

Mike Russell

First published October 2018

Throughout this winter, right through to the 31^st March next year, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is undertaking a nationwide survey of the tawny owl, UK’s most common owl. This survey has two aspects to it, firstly, volunteers are assigned areas, a kilometre square tetrad and they have been asked to visit their site on 2 occasions and these took place in September or October.

The second arm of the survey is open to anyone and can be undertaken anywhere, you can take part of from the comfort of your own bed by just opening your window and listening! All you need to do is listen for 20 minutes each week between now and the end of March. It doesn’t matter if you miss a week, all records are welcome as are those that don’t record any owls at all; the absence of owls in an area is as important information as hearing one calling. If you are interested in taking part in the survey, you can download the information from the BTO website (www.bto.org) and the tawny owl survey information is on the opening page.

As I said originally, the tawny owl is our most common owl, but it isn’t seen that often because of its very nocturnal behaviour, we are much more familiar with its call, the archetypal ‘too-whit, too-whoo’ sound the floats through the night skies. Although it is our most numerous owl species, it is on the Amber List of species for conservation concern, this means that its population has declined between 25-50% over the last 40 years. One of the main reasons for the survey is to build on previous survey information from 12 years ago and to see if the increasing urbanisation and the subsequent light and noise pollution is having an impact on tawny owl breeding success. In the more rural areas, loss of habitat is another potential reason for their decline.

Henfield seems to be doing quite well for tawny owls, this is mainly from anecdotal evidence and also a continuing monitoring project undertaken by David Plummer through Henfield Birdwatch. Over the last couple of breeding seasons, a number of tawny owl sites were found and chicks were heard at these sites. At Woods Mill, there was a very vocal family of three chicks and on one lucky occasion I was able to see one of the adults feeding a hungry youngster. Also, a very prominent family held a territory along the Downslink where on a dusk walk I encountered a curious youngster staring down at me from a branch across the track.

Hearing the call of a tawny owl of an autumn night is one of the great natural sounds of the UK. It can for some people sound quite eerie and in days gone by, many myths and stories have been associated with it, many of them relating to death or dark deeds. For the owl though, it is merely the best way of communicating to each other through the hours of darkness. If you hear the ‘too-whoo’ sound then it is the male proclaiming a territory to other males and also trying to attract a female into it, whereas the ‘too-whit’ sound is usually a responding female, so you are in fact hearing two owls.

While still fairly common, it is sad to think that this wonderful, iconic bird is declining, so any help in finding out where these birds are will be of great help in finding ways to make sure that they are still around us in the future.

Mike Russell

First published June 2018

We’re in the middle of a heatwave, it’s a Sunday, summer is truly here so what can be better than relaxing in the garden absorbing the warmth and the associated symphonies of the natural world. Very soon it begins, the soothing hum of an electric lawnmower, the excruciating whine of a strimmer, if you are lucky you might hear the distant choking of a chainsaw, but best of all the musical harmonies of a trio of power drills, angle grinders and tile cutters. Welcome to the sound of a 21^st Century summer in England.

No longer does the gentle drone of bees and hoverflies prevail, nor the soothing sound of leaves rustling in a slight breeze, or the general sound of birdsong, all drowned out by a cacophony of machinery where the noise virtually obliterates all natural sounds, invades your aural space and prevents you from enjoying what you most like doing within your own boundaries. Now, I realise that everyone has to maintain their gardens and if you are at work all week then you have a limited amount of time to mow the lawn, trim the hedges and vegetation or indeed carry out your own house/ building extensions. Last summer in our road and on virtually every Sunday, an extension was being built by the occupants, so power drills, grinders and grinders were in constant use a combination that, for me, made it impossible to be outside, the noise piercing through the air into my space.

I checked the laws relating to noise and basically, they state that on weekends and bank holidays you can’t use the above instruments before 9.00am and after 8.00pm but between those hours, you can make as much noise as you want, they don’t really come under the term ‘unreasonable’. In the case of building construction, it can be stipulated in the planning consent that work should not be undertaken on a Sunday. In Germany, there is enforced legislation to say that on no account can any of the above outlined activities take place; lucky Germans! Now, I daresay that if I ever raise this to people and said wouldn’t it be great if we had such a law in the UK, the majority of responses would be that I should take myself off to Germany then (probably not in quite such polite language!), but I really do feel that I have just as much right not to have to listen to other people’s noise for at least a limited defined period as they have to make it.

Our world has become increasingly noisier over the years and this has generated research into the impact that this can have on wildlife, particularly birds. There has for a few years now been anecdotal evidence that more birds such as blackbirds, robins and song thrushes are singing during the night, one reason being proposed is that our cities and towns are so noisy during the day and evening that birds singing for a mate or to proclaim a territory can’t be heard over the din! Night time is quieter so they are more likely to get a response if they sing then. In 2001, the University of Bonn started to research how loud the nightingales sang that bred in the green areas in Berlin and they recorded one bird was singing at 93 decibels, that’s 5 decibels louder than noise regulations allowed! Which set the question, how loud can birds sing? As loud as they have to make themselves heard apparently.

Noise pollution is becoming a bigger issue not only for it’s impact on wildlife but on our own general health and wellbeing. Is it too much too ask that for just a relatively short time in our busy week we have time to enjoy just a little peace and quiet?

Mike Russell