The RSPB North Staffs Local Group

The Ouzel April 2017

A non-edible highlight of our Tittesworth Walk

Goosander photo credit – Ben Andrew (rspb-images.com)

Bean geese photo credit - James Greer

‘Somewhere in the woods beyond the river a nightingale had begun to sing with all the full throated zest of a bird conscious of having had a rave notice from the poet Keats.’ PG Wodehouse

The recent addition to our local birding map, the pool at Bent Lane, Whitmore received some rare visitors towards the end of the winter when several bean geese took up residence for a few weeks. The bean goose is scarce in Britain.

Group Leader’s Message – Geoff Sales

Hello all. In my last Ouzel missive, I mentioned the impending post-Bins and Boots pub lunch in January. Well, it was an unqualified success.

The turnout for the walk around Tittesworth Reservoir was roughly double that on other Bins & Boots walks, 23 people managing to make it rather than the usual 12 or so. Not all stayed for lunch, but then not all those who had lunch walked; 24 of us dined, and the pub, The Lazy Trout, served us very well:

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I can heartily recommend it. There'll be more of these tie-ins in due course. The day’s birding report is on our website.

Last time I also mentioned the Staffs Birders' Conference, which was scheduled for 5 March. This was also successful and a report on it appears below. Incidentally, I'm not planning to organise a conference next year.

Last July, we held our first butterfly walk (a definite success) and whilst the weather was perfect, the intended leader was unavoidably prevented from being there. So to make amends, he (Dave Emley, BEM) has agreed to lead one this year. It's not in the programme but all the details are on our website. The site is the same as last year: Silverdale Country Park, Cannel Row entrance. It kicks off at 1.30 pm - join us for a picnic from 1pm if you wish - on Friday, 14 July. Let’s hope the weather is as good!

In future, I'd like to lead fewer car-share trips, so if anyone else would like a bash at this fulfilling role, do please let me know. I'll supply whatever assistance I can.

Right, it's time to brush up on our bird song and ID skills - I wish you all a good season's birding.

Staffordshire Birders’ Conference, Sunday 5 March 2017

When a second Staffordshire Birders’ Conference was called for just over a year ago it must have raised questions in most people’s minds, follow–ups invariably coming with their own set of risks as regards unrealistic expectations and unfounded hopes. Would the speakers be as good as their predecessors? Would the programme be as varied and interesting? And would there be the same degree of enthusiasm for the event as well as turnout on the door? Well, thanks to all the hard work put in by Geoff beforehand we could feel fairly confident about the first two of those but some of the questions still persisted and would only really be answered on the day.

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Barn owl photo credit – Dave Braddock (rspb-

images.com)

And frankly that was looking anything but kind with enough rain to suggest no one would have to go that far from the conference to find their first ducks and swans. Inside Oulton Village Hall, however, everything was going quite well with Sandy McLauchlan performing her usual splendid job as MC in getting things underway.

Helen Cottam, our opening speaker, gave us an insight into the perils faced by the barn owl nowadays and the actions Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s Barn Owl Action Group, BOAG, are taking to help the species, which is on the RSPB’s Amber List. In addition to a loss of traditional breeding sites, with our modern appetite for barn conversions and felling old trees, the barn owl population is badly affected by cold winters and late springs, modern agricultural practice and the periodic fluctuations that take place in the vole population. As we all know, they are also all too frequently casualties in road and railway collisions. In response to these problems the BOAG is heavily involved in the provision of nest boxes in locations a safe distance away from known accident hotspots and access to adequate hunting country. The BOAG will welcome reports of any barn owl sightings you have within the county, which is towards the northern limit of the bird’s UK range.

As well as providing an impressive yardstick for the day, Helen’s talk also marked a change of direction from the 2016 conference in concentrating on a specific bird species. After the lunch break Kate Thorpe would continue in similar vein when describing the reedbed reconstruction work being undertaken at RSPB

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Middleton Lakes to improve the Tame Valley for bitterns, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The second speaker, Georgia Locock, was also the youngest and it was only fitting that her talk was about the next generation of bird watchers and conservation volunteers. Determined to allay fears about whether the youngsters of today care sufficiently about nature to fight its corner in years to come, Georgia was more than happy to reassure us that they most definitely do. Although it’s socially unacceptable for youngsters to display a passion for any special interests, their feelings towards wildlife can be gauged, in part, from the number of subscribers to the ‘Next Generation Birders Official Blog’ and their usage of the facilities at the various bird observatories around the country. Notwithstanding this, Georgia felt there was a need for everyone to be more proactive in promoting the cause, even, as she put it, ‘pushing it into people’s faces’ if necessary, as she had done with a peregrine falcon watch at Lichfield Cathedral in 2016.

Next up was Roger Broadbent who described the way in which the West Midland Bird Club, WMBC, is going about its five yearly survey of the birds on Cannock Chase during 2017 and the findings made to date in relation to the 46 targeted species. The Chase is apparently now one of only two common crossbill strongholds in Staffordshire, Hanchurch Woods being the other, whilst reed buntings are practically everywhere, with 125 having been seen on the Chase in one survey area alone.

Roger was followed by Peter Durnall who brought the morning to a close with two of his excellent films, ‘Skomer’ - based on his experience there as a volunteer for a week - and ‘A Year in the Life of a Wildlife Film Maker.’

After lunch and Kate Thorpe’s talk, when she reminded us that 2016 was a great year for bitterns, with 164 booming males and 60 known nests, it was the turn of Mike Price from the Peak District Raptor Monitoring Group, PDRMG. Mike began by describing himself as being on the other side of the fence to most

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‘An unwanted presence....’ Jackdaw photo credit –

Alan Stones

of the audience in not being a bird watcher. He had, however, been involved with raptor protection for a number of years after buying a pair of binoculars so he could study the birds of prey in the part of the Peak District where he lives - which sounded suspiciously like bird watching to most of us - only to discover there weren’t any, prompting him to look into the reasons why. Almost inevitably his talk included a roll call of the hen harriers that have been illegally killed or have otherwise ‘disappeared’ in the last few years.

The penultimate speaker was Nick Pomiankowski, Staffordshire’s Bird Recorder, who provided us with a detailed update on how some of our key, less common, birds are doing. Referring to the various losses and gains that have been made in recent years Nick reported that the number of lesser spotted woodpecker sites has halved since 2007 whilst Cetti’s warblers, in contrast, are very much on the increase. Although the wood warbler is in decline nationally its local population is fairly stable despite being somewhat on the small side. More information can be obtained by going online: http:/www.westmidlandbirdclub.org.uk/research and http:/www.staffs-ecology.org.uk/htm12015/index.php?title = Atlas-of-Birds-of-Staffordshire

And then it was time for Kate MacRae or ‘Wildlife Kate’ as she is perhaps better known these days, to bring all the excellent presentations to an end by outlining the way in which a version of ‘Springwatch’ can be created in anyone’s garden with a little effort. Her talk updated the very enjoyable one delivered at our indoor meeting in October and most of the audience couldn’t help feeling for her when she expressed concerns about the tawny owl egg that had been laid in one of her

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garden’s nest boxes just twelve hours earlier, given the nearby presence of jackdaws.

All in all it was a great day that ticked all the boxes, with attendance numbers virtually the same as last year despite the weather. Many thanks are due to all the speakers and also the various members of the North Staffs Local Group who did so much to make the day happen: Sandy McLauchlan as MC and for baking all the much appreciated cakes and biscuits; Don McLauchlan for manning the door; Peter Durnall for supplying the technical equipment; Val, Lee, Lynda, Sheila and everyone else who served up the tea and refreshments and, of course, Geoff who put it all together. Many thanks.

Editor’s Note

Following on from Mike Price’s references to hen harriers, please note that the RSPB has recently reopened a hotline, 0845 4600121 (or on-line, henharriers@rspb.org.uk) for you to report details of any breeding activity you come across this summer.

Storm Over Sandbach Flashes – Roger Birch

As it’s so rare our bird trips are affected by bad weather, I felt compelled to express a few words about one that was - the bins and boots visit the visit to Sandbach Flashes in February:

Wind and rain relentless!!!

Centurion oak uprooted – recumbent – blocks the road,

Scots pine – splintered – poleaxed.

Goosander and swans dishevelled, cast against a lea shore.

Shovelers battle waves, dabble, bills held low.

Whilst shelduck hunker down on open ground,

Wigeon struggle to feed beyond, heads to wind

And gadwall seek respite in margin reeds.

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Half a dozen hunched snipe ashiver on the shore

Watch one lone redshank probe the frigid ooze.

As twigs rain down, finches feed low down on the thorn’

Tree sparrows swept aloft like wizened leaves.....

Yet somehow pintail duck still looks serene

Heads held high, necks sleek and clean.

John Berrington

In mid December, the Group lost a good friend and member when John Berrington passed away. Enthralled by the natural world from a tender age John was able to pursue his interest in it through his career as a geography teacher at Newcastle College, membership of several walking groups in the local area and latterly ourselves, with a camera, another of his passions, never far away.

Some of us may have memories of him leading a Bins and Boots walk around Beech some years ago or the talks he gave on the natural world at Staffordshire Wildlife Trust meetings but it’s more likely you will remember him for his ready sense of humour and friendship. Our condolences go to his wife and daughter, Lynda and Helen, together with all the other members of his family and friends.

Pintail photo credit – Ben Hall (rspbiimages.com)

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Wadden Sea Visit – Rob Lucking

Earlier this year I was fortunate to spend a week with some colleagues visiting the Wadden Sea in Holland and Germany. I had shown some conservationists from the Wadden Sea around our Wash reserves back in 2012 and had always wanted to arrange a reciprocal visit to see if there were any lessons we could learn which would help us manage our coastal sites.

The Wadden Sea is the longest unbroken stretch of sand and mudflats in the world extending for 500km from Denmark in the north to Holland in south. The Wadden Sea supports an incredible 10-12 million water birds each year. To put this into perspective, The Wash - the UK’s most important estuary for birds - supports an estimated 2 million water birds over the course of the year. Because of its natural importance, the Dutch and German Wadden Sea was designated as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009 with the Danish Wadden Sea joining in 2014.

And so on a cold Sunday night at the end of April, five of us boarded the Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry. After disembarking the ferry on Monday morning we had a long drive from Hook of Holland to the town of Wilhelmshaven in Lower Saxony, Germany where the Wadden Sea Secretariat is based.

We visited the Wattenmeer National Park and saw some interesting examples of ‘managed realignment’ where sea walls are removed to allow saltmarsh to re-establish on land that was claimed from the sea many years previously. Whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, managed realignment can be an effective means of flood defence as saltmarsh is great at absorbing wave energy as well as providing important habitat for breeding birds such as avocet and redshank and wintering birds such as barnacle geese.

The RSPB has a number of managed realignment sites – Freiston Shore in Lincolnshire and Wallasea Island in Essex

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Sperm whale skeleton - photo credit Rob Lucking

Sandwich tern colony at Utopia Farm, Texel - photo credit Rob Lucking

being two of them – and it was interesting to compare experiences. It was also reassuring to know that many of the management challenges are the same on either side of the North Sea!

Whilst in Wilhelmshaven we also visited the Wadden Sea World Heritage Visitor Centre which is housed in an old torpedo storage building. We were interested in seeing how the ecology of the Wadden Sea was interpreted to visitors and whether there were any good ideas we could adapt to help interpret our coastal nature reserves.

The centrepiece to the museum was an entire sperm whale skeleton completed with ‘plastinated’ internal organs. The next time a whale washes up on the North Norfolk Coast...!

We then headed down to the island of Texel on the Dutch Coast and met up with Eckhart Boot who works for the conservation organisation Natuurmonumentum. We particularly wanted to see a site called Utopia Farm which is an area of

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shallow saline lagoons created when the sea walls protecting the island were strengthened several years ago. The lagoons are less than a foot deep and have lots of exposed islands for birds to nest on. Utopia Farm supports a thriving Sandwich tern colony as well as plenty of breeding waders such as avocets, ringed plovers and oystercatcher. The site is so successful that the RSPB has started to create similar lagoons on some of our coastal reserves with the aim of having a whole string of shallow lagoons up and down the east coast.

Texel is also famous for its spoonbills. They’re everywhere! Over 600 pairs nest on the island, many of them on the ground due to the absence of predators. We were unable to visit the main colony that numbers around 400 pairs but Eckart did show us an outlying colony on an

area of saltmarsh where spoonbills and large gulls (herring and lesser black-blacked) nested side by side. Unfortunately they were too far away to photograph but this one was right next to the road amongst a flock of brent geese!

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed both to this edition of the Ouzel and the newsletter since September. If you’ve got any articles, photographs, cartoons or ideas you’d like to share - and please note that I’d love to receive them – please contact me, Alan Cartwright, via 01630-296126 or pandacartwright@gmail.com and, if neither of those work, try grabbing me at an indoor meeting.

Spoonbill photo credit – Rob Lucking

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A zookeeper is ordering new animals. As he fills out the order forms, he types “two mongeese”. That doesn’t look right, so he tries “two mongoose”, and then “two mongooses”.

Giving up, he types, “One mongoose, and while you’re at it, please send another one”.

‘Bookends’ Avocets photo credit Penny Cartwright

The RSPB is the country’s largest nature conservation charity, inspiring everyone to give nature a home.

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The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a registered charity: England & Wales no. 207076, Scotland no. SC037654

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Tail Feathers

A recent study by academics from the University of Exeter, the British Trust for Ornithology and the University of Queensland has shown that people who are in touch with nature, through regular sightings of birds, trees or shrubs, are more likely to feel good about themselves and the world about them than those who aren’t. Let’s not dwell on the fact that most of us were already aware of the benefits of birdwatching and instead just concentrate on one potential problem this creates.

It’s not entirely impossible that in years to come doctors won’t stop at encouraging their patients to get out into the fresh air more often and begin putting visits to bird reserves and local patches on prescription. So, before this happens and we have to queue up to get into hides, let’s get out there and do some serious birding!

This is the last Ouzel for 2016-17 but the Group’s programme still has some way to run. We’ll hopefully see you at May’s indoor meeting together with some of the birding trips lined up for the next few months and please don’t forget the butterfly walk on 14 July. Have a good summer.

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