Something for the weekend: starlings and swans
|16:04 UK time, Friday, 5 November 2010
Mild weather and rain look like making Firework Night a washout, at least in my neck of the woods here in rural Somerset. But a change to colder, fresher weather over the weekend is likely to make things a bit more interesting.
Currently the fields and hedgerows around the parish are dominated by one species: the starling. Starlings flood into Britain every autumn in their millions, with birds from as far afield as Scandinavia and northern Russia heading west and south to Britain to take advantage of our mild winter climate.
The famous roost at Ham Wall RSPB reserve on the Somerset Levels is now beginning to take shape, with more and more birds joining every evening – and will continue to grow until the New Year, especially if there is a cold snap.
The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust has also reported other arrivals – good numbers of ducks, geese and swans at Slimbridge, and at other WWT sites up and down the country.
Sadly, a gradual fall in numbers of winter visitors such as Bewick's swans and white-fronted geese in the past few years means that we hardly ever get them here in Somerset any more. There used to be a regular flock of wild swans down the road from me, but nowadays they are few and far between. I suspect this is because conditions are staying milder in the Baltic and the Netherlands, where many of these birds pass through on their way here – as a result they are simply staying put.
I did see a pair of whooper swans at Cheddar Reservoir last week. These are the larger, more elegant, and longer billed cousins of the Bewick's swans, with similar bill colour (though the whooper's bill always appears yellow with a bit of black, rather than the predominantly black-with-a-bit-of-yellow of the Bewick's swan).
Wild swans, along with a host of other waterbirds, feature in episode two of Birds Britannia, on BBC Four. (Full schedule.)
The programme tells the dramatic story of bird protection in Britain – and how we almost lost these wonderful birds altogether, before they staged a comeback thanks to enlightened visionaries such as the founder of the WWT, Sir Peter Scott.
Comment number 1.
At 13:24 11th Nov 2010, djbadger wrote:I watched Birds Brittania last night and enjoyed the start of the programme but then disappointment set in. It came across as two different programmes clumsily spliced together. Most of which was a promotional video for the RSPB.
It covered the huge loss of wetlands in the UK and set the scene for a good look at the reasons for the recovery of wildfowl. Then it switched to looking at re-introductions with lots of irrelevant stuff such as the sea eagles which currently have little to do with freshwater wetlands. There was nothing about the real reasons wildfowl have started to recover such as the proliferation of gravel pits and reservoirs associated with 20thC development and it missed a perfect opportunity to showcase the Great Fen Project which aims to restore a sizeable chunk of that lost fenland, the loss of which was described so well at the start of the programme.
Protection can achieve little if the habitat is not there, and this programme missed out the work that is going on all over Britain by many different organisations and people to restore those lost habitats.
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Comment number 2.
At 22:42 11th Nov 2010, Awsome Johnno wrote:Your item on 'big cats' is very interesting But I must pose the question to Chris, " Will cats released into the wild due to the passing of the 'The Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976' still to be roaming after all of this time, or could they have bred?
That said, as a rural police officer I attended many reported sightings of big cats in Yorkshire in the late 90's and early noughties. At this time there was some research by a Professor who collating all sightings to detect any patterns.
And just to give you a more feasible theory, as a Police Wildlife Crime Officer I also was aware of non native species of cats being smuggled into the UK to be released for 'big game hunting'
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