We had our reserve annual review yesterday, with staff from HQ (Bedfordshire), regional office (Norwich) and of course here. We lost our ecologist Graham for a while as he dived off into the 360 hide to see a Temminck's stint. We do seem to have done well for this diminutive little wader in the past few years with sightings of up to eight birds. Temminck's stint breeds across Scandinavia eastwards and one or two even nest in Scotland (well two at least I guess - it does take two to tango after all), but they aren't seen on migration very easily in Britain.
Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat and zoologist in the 18th & 19th centuries. He was quite an explorer/naturalist with 16 bird species and lots of other animals named after him in English or Latin. My favourites are kissing gourami Helostoma temminckii and Temminck's flying squirrel (was it a flying squirrel before or after Temminck shot it?!). Few of the species he described are well known, so presumably he had a good eye and aim for the obscure, of course in his day animals were identified in the hand after having been shot.
We do pretty well here for Temminck's stints because we've created some nice large shallow freshwater areas (the Scrapes) for them to feed in. These have encouraged Temminck's stints and other waders to stop in and refuel during their migrations from Africa to Scandinavia. Temminck's stint is about the size of a sparrow and unlike the more familiar little stint has yellow/green legs, so why not see if you can follow in our ecologist's and a Dutch aristocrat's footsteps and find one here at Frampton?
John
The Government organisation Defra has recently announced that, due to pressure from the pheasant shooting industry, they plan to invest £400,000 in destroying buzzard nests and capturing adult birds. These wild birds will then be kept in captivity.
Martin Harper, Conservation Director for the RSPB, has put the nonsense of this plan into a few crucial facts:
- An independent report by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) found than 1-2% of the 40 million non-native game birds released each year are taken by birds of prey (and that’s all birds of prey, not just buzzards). For comparison, more than 7% are run over on the road.
- There are plenty of ways of reducing the number of game birds taken by buzzards that are both more effective and more humane, e.g. more vegetation cover for captive-bred birds, birds-scarers and diversionary feeding.
- There is a great deal of evidence to show that another buzzard will fill the place of any that is killed or taken, so capturing buzzards to prevent them killing pheasants won’t work anyway.
- Buzzards are a native species whose numbers have only recently begun to recover from persecution over the last two centuries. Pheasants, on the other hand, are bred purely for sport and industry.
Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
I for one am outraged that my taxes are to be spent on further persecution of this wonderful bird. I will be writing to my MP to urge them to oppose this measure in parliament.
Please, please do the same and make sure Nature’s Voice is not drowned out by the calls of those wishing to persecute wildlife for their own gains.
You can find out how to contact your MP here
See what Martin Harper has to say on the subject and get some ideas of what to put in your letter here.
Thank you for Stepping Up For Nature.
On the down side: the black-winged stilt has not been seen today.
On the up side: the black-necked grebe is still about, as are the curlew sandpipers and wood sandpipers (2 around today) and at about 4.30 this afternoon 2 black terns arrived on the reserve, in full summer plumage. Beautiful!
Hello from Frampton,
We’ve had a windy day on the reserve, with north-easterly winds reaching 15mph at times.
Having said that, the wildlife hasn’t been blown away and there’s plenty to see.
Today’s sighting highlights include:
Black-winged stilt x 1
Black-necked grebe x 1
Curlew sandpiper x 25 (The highest British spring count on one site for at least 11 years)
Greenshank x 1
Garganey x 2
Dunlin x 100
Avocet x 60+ (including nesting birds)
Little gull x 9
Sanderling x 1
Black tailed godwit x 30 (in lovely breeding plumage)
Little stint x 1
Wood sandpiper x 1
Turtle dove x 1 (Have you heard about our recently launched campaign to save ‘the only British bird that purrs’ from extinction in the UK?)
Weekend weather:
Saturday’s forecast is cloudy but mainly dry with lighter winds. Sunday brings the risk of showers in the afternoon and slightly stronger winds. You may need to wrap up warmly but you never know which birds the wind will blow in!
Next week’s tides:
Black plumage seems to be the fashion on the Frampton bird-walk this season. With black-winged stilts parading the reserve for almost three weeks now and a black-necked grebe arriving this week I'm expected black vulture and black kite any day now...
Ok, so maybe not, but there monochrome madness is spreading to other parts of the reserve as well. Blackcaps can be heard singing in the hedgerows, dozens of black-headed gulls are nesting on the reedbed islands and if you look under the eaves on the left hand side of the Visitor Centre you'll see a nest of swallows!
This explains all the swallow-action we've been seeing around the VC lately; the parents are busy hunting insects to feed their young. I can't wait to see them fledge and take their first flight into this scary world of ours. At least they'll be starting life at Frampton, where there's plenty of food and lovely habitat for them. Maybe they'll come back to Frampton after their first winter migration to sub-Saharan Africa!
Come on down to the reserve to enjoy the sunshine, see our gothic wonders and some colourful birds too, and have a chat with our friendly volunteers and staff.
Image by Christopher Upson April 2012