Mecca?

A dull East Bank, a great scrape; the Ruff and the smooth.

A weekend up in north Norfolk, the first for a while, brought on a bit of reminiscing as I walked around Cley, a place that, for a while, I seemed to visit nearly every weekend. I remember getting my newly published copy of ‘Where to watch birds’ back in the late 60’s and reading the following description of Cley:

“There can hardly be a serious bird-watcher in the country who has not made the pilgrimage to Cley. It has been the Mecca of ornithologists for the last 140 years...” wrote John Gooders, continuing ...”the East Bank at Cley is the best place in England to see passage waders – and to meet well known bird-watchers”.

I visited Cley soon after, on a YOC trip, meeting both Richard Richardson and Billy Bishop, but it was the couple of hours in the company of RAR on the East Bank that was truly inspiring as he seemed to magic birds out of thin air for us. My first solo trip to Cley was in 1970, and by chance, RAR was in a car that stopped for me as I hitch-hiked the final leg along the coast. The trip to Cley was to become a regular birding weekend over the following years and the walk around the Cley 'square' to became a favourite.  Many good birds were seen, with Caspian Tern, Red-throated Pipit and Black-headed Bunting amongst the better of my 'self-founds'.

Forty years on, Cley still delivers. Last weekend I saw plenty of passage waders (but there was a scarcity of well known birders, well, any birders in fact). Three Wood Sands, 2 Little Stints, Ruffs, Knot, Spotshanks, Greenshanks, numerous Dunlin, Whimbrels and godwits, and 9 Spoonbills were amongst the many birds on show. The scrapes looked in great condition, the hides blend nicely into the landscape and there’s a nice modern eco-centre containing a good range of books. I renewed my lapsed NWT membership, after all it’s only half the price of a tank of petrol.

But the walk around the ‘square’ is not what it used to be. East Bank is, well, dull, although Arnold's still produced as good a range of birds as any other pool. A bench has replaced the old flattened grass – and more than accommodates the number of birders there. A good walk should have points of interest along the way; variations in habitat, pools, openings, viewpoints etc, but those that previously existed, and the hides off the bank, have long since been removed or allowed to grow over.   Most disappointing of all, there is little sense of the history of this place. A few named hides or pools, and just a faded plaque for RAR on an obscure back wall. What could this place be like with a bit of imagination in both site layout and interpretation? This could be a birders Mecca, but currently it's just a well managed reserve with barely a nod to its past.

Returning home, I flicked through the pages of ‘Cley Marsh and its Birds’ by Billy Bishop and arrived at the page where he recalls a letter received from Lord Buxton in the 60’s. It seemed worth sharing. Lord Buxton writes:

“Within an hour I was sitting in the boat house watching a bittern boom – the very thing I had yearned to see for decades. But it was quite a shock. All the famous descriptions by experts were proved phoney. Quite honestly I was a bit embarrassed at first, because the bittern looked as if it was blowing off through its backside. This seemed rather a tawdry climax to the greatest discovery on earth and I wondered in what language I was going to announce it to the world!”

That Bitterns fart, rather than boom, is still a closely guarded secret.

Thinking and tinkering

One particularly energetic discussion with Dutch colleagues on the recent trip to The Netherlands centred around the qualities that make a good reserve manager. Why do some reserves appear vibrant and others as dull as ditchwater?

‘Thinking and tinkering’ is a phrase that may well sum up the best of reserve wardens . The great old wardens of yore ( and the best of today), were forever tinkering with their reserves; thinking about how to change things for the better and trying things out. Good reserve management requires an intimate knowledge of the site and an inquisitive mind. Reading through some of the books by wardens, such as Bert Axell’s ‘Minsmere: Portrait of a Bird Reserve’, this is clear. The now famous ‘scrape’ appeared bit by bit over at least 12 years. Trial and error was involved in getting it right, and much tinkering management by wardens and many volunteers.

Is this art of tinkering being lost? Perhaps. Nowadays, many wardens seem less connected with their reserves as the demands on their time increase and more time is spent behind the desk. Some even mutter about getting people in to monitor birds as they don’t have enough time!!   So how do we encourage the tinkerer? Well, partly it’s about appointing, and then developing, the right people in the first place, people with a passion for wildlife. However it’s done, we need more thinkers and tinkerers please.

The poly and the plover

Ringed Plover (on Scottish machair), Grass-poly and a view across Moore Lake, Fen Drayton.

The week ended with a leisurely stroll around Fen Drayton lakes, a series of gravel pits adjacent to the River Ouse. This is a good site for wintering waterbirds, notably including Smew and Bittern, and now also supports a couple of ‘booming’ Bitterns and breeding Marsh Harriers. Fen Drayton is one of the very few remaining sites for Grass-poly, now classified as ‘endangered’ in the UK. The usual site held just one plant that I could see, but as I wandered around, many flowering plants were visible in a new location. This is a plant that requires disturbed ground with winter flooding and a spring draw-down. A programme of spring rotovation of plots should see it survive here.

The site also supports a selection of typical gravel pit waders; LRPs, Ringed Plovers and Oystercatcher, as well as Lapwing and Redshank. It was good to see a pair of Ringed Plovers with chicks. After their surge into inland sites in the late 70s and 80s, this seems to be a bird that is withering away as a breeding species in the south-east. The inland birds are now much scarcer and those on the coast struggle against disturbance and sea level rise. The latest national survey reported a 37% decline, with the greatest decreases in inland areas.

The key for both the poly and the plover at Fen Drayton is the retention of some typical early succession gravel pit habitat. Yet natural succession is usually rampant at these sites, and before long, all you have is a tree-lined pool of dullness, unless some drastic management is undertaken. Fen Drayton’s greatest asset is its location in an active floodplain. Floods from the Ouse can put the whole site under water but this makes the habitats more dynamic. Combining this with the actions of large herbivores and some periodic ‘knocking about’ with big machines (to create habitat at the right level in the flood regime) should see the value of the site being maintained.

Apart from the Ringed Plover, it was fairly quiet on the bird front. Lots of moulting Tufted Duck and Pochard, a Hobby or two, Dunlin and Redshank on muddy islands, and a family of Water Rails.

Back To Black

Black-necked and Slavonian Grebes; fantastic birds, and would be even better with decent photos.

I have the task of writing an action plan for Black-necked Grebe.  Hmm, what do you do for something that is considered more League Two than Premier when it comes to conservation ranking?   Black-necked and Slavonian (which definitely does get a high ranking) form an interesting comparison pair and I’ve looked at breeding sites of both species this summer. Both broadly like highly productive, shallow, open waters, with marginal and submerged aquatic vegetation.

The more southerly BNG likes its open waters to be larger than the Slav in general, more nutrient-rich, and sometimes ephemeral. The ephemeral bit is interesting. Breeding birds frequently appear on shallow floods, and floodplain habitats are used extensively in other parts of the world. So, one option would be to create shallow lakes or meres, which would have the added benefit of being highly attractive to a wide range of birds. So perhaps this is the BNGs relevance to conservation in the UK – it represents a largely missing habitat type.

However, it is the quality of the marginal and submerged vegetation that seems to be important for both these grebes, as this has a direct influence on the key threats to nest survival in both; nest flooding in spells of poor (windy) weather, and predation.   So that’s it; create shallow meres with luxuriant aquatic vegetation. Job done.

I was feeling a bit cheerful today so I decided to take the edge off that with a visit to the Girling Res. For once, the site turned up trumps; a flock of 36 BNGs. This early return of adults, with just 4 young birds amongst them, not only hints at a poor breeding season but also provides a clue as to where these birds are coming from.

Rights of passage

Passage B-t Godwit, Ouse pool with waders, Cranes - "don't look now but is that a Fox?"

Look, all I want to do is go out locally, visit a little muddy pool and see a few passage waders. Is that too much to ask? Well evidently it is. The water is either too high or too low, or it’s bone-dry, or overgrown.
Travelling around a number of sites over the last week, I was struck by the lack of good quality wet habitat for waterbirds at the current time. Okay, it has been a dry spring and water is in short supply despite the recent rain, but there seems little or no attempt to even try and create shallow wet habitat with muddy margins.

Have we forgotten about the importance of feeding stop-over locations for passage waterbirds?

Food-rich, shallow wetland habitats are important for wetland birds prior to, or during, migration. Birds have differing migration strategies and will use these wetlands in different ways. This was clear during the recent trip to the Netherlands when Jan van der Winden's discussed his fascinating research into Purple Heron ecology. After breeding, Purple Herons spend a month or so in a favoured feeding area to put on weight before migration. They remain within this rich feeding area, roosting nearby. With a fast, long-distance flight to follow, good feeding areas are critical at both ends of the journey. Other species will use wetlands to ‘re-fuel’ along the way, with shorter flights between stop-over sites. Birds that reach the most productive of these sites may move on in a relatively straightforward manner towards the wintering areas. On the other hand, birds that miss the main sites or encounter difficulties in ‘re-fuelling’ , either because of low quality habitat or food depletion by preceding birds, need the option of alternatives before moving on. A complex of stop-over sites through the flyway is therefore essential.

Okay, so there are a number of large, mainly coastal, sites that cater for passage birds (not necessarily all in good condition), but the range of alternative options in the wider countryside is sparse. Yet on nature reserves that might be expected to provide such habitat, provision seems mostly incidental rather than a deliberate and thoughtful attempt to provide good quality habitat. It does not appear to be a conservation priority. Surely this is wrong.

A visit to the Ouse Washes at last delivered some reasonable habitat. A muddy pool supported 24 Ruff as well as Avocet, Dunlin, Redshank, Lapwing and Green Sandpiper. The next pool had Shoveler, Garganey and Teal. Nearby, 3 Cranes eyed-up a young Fox before chasing it up the bank.

The A B C of wet grassland management

Well, the S, W, P of grassland management actually – sward, water and predation. With the breeding season fading fast, last week involved a fair amount of reviewing how it all went. Breeding waders have fared badly this spring on a lot of wet grassland reserves due to the dry conditions and the resultant increased impact of various predators, as noted here before.

However, Cantley Marshes is a shining example of a careful and considered approach to understanding the issues on a site and finally delivering the goods. When I first looked at Buckenham and Cantley in 2005 it supported 119 pairs of waders, but numbers were declining and Lapwing productivity was way below the target figure of around 0.7 fledged chicks per pair to maintain a stable population.

An initial habitat ‘audit’ identified clear problems: the sward was too long and dominated by rushes, and the grassland was drying out too early in spring. A programme of rush control and improved grazing (with clear targets for spring sward height) was put in place. Improvements were made to the water regime; low spots hemorrhaging water into ditches were identified and blocked, and additional water features were created to hold winter rainfall.

With the habitat looking better, waders increased, but not to target levels and productivity remained low. Two years of study of predation rates followed. With data loggers placed in the nests (to determine the time of predation) and nest cameras overlooking selected nests, it was clear that predation was an issue. Surveys of crow and fox numbers showed both to be above critical levels, but with the loggers pinpointing nocturnal predation and the cameras taking lovely snaps of Foxes, the main culprit was becoming clear, although as on other sites, the overall predation picture was complicated and varied from year to year.

2011 was the year when it all came together. It took a while you may say, but this was a careful step by step approach of evidence gathering and problem solving. Achieving ideal habitat condition is critical. Following further tinkering with the water regime, the fields held high water levels into the spring despite the dry conditions. With these high water levels reducing the ingress of ground predators, combined with a targeted early season reduction of Foxes, the number of waders and their hatching success both increased. The end of season result was a total of 161 pairs of waders and a minimum productivity total of 0.8 chicks per pair of Lapwings.

Waders are under pressure in the lowland wetlands where they were once so common. But how many of our wet grassland nature reserves simply fail their S W P?

Spoon-fed

Feeding Spoonbill pictures taken by John Bottomley at Titchwell. 

The Wadden Sea islands are remarkable for both migrant and breeding birds. Texel, at the southern end if the chain, is perhaps the best known to birders and has high levels of conservation management involving terns, waders, plovers and Spoonbill.

One key fact is that the island has virtually no mammalian predators, just a few Stoats. This was clear at our first stop; a Sandwich Tern colony of some 1200 pairs, on easily accessible spits and islands but full of chicks. The next stop was one of two Spoonbill colonies on the island, one amongst scrub, the other in saltmarsh, but both on the ground.

Spoonbills have been increasing in the Netherlands since the 1980s. There was an expansion into the Wadden Islands after the colonies at Oostvaardersplassen moved when the site was dried out for some years. The two colonies appear to feed principally on different food. The 'scrub' colony feeds on sticklebacks, with birds foraging principally on the Dutch mainland many miles away. The saltmarsh birds feed on prawns in the Waddensea. The Dutch have developed specialised sluices to allow spring-running Three-spined Sticklebacks to enter freshwater from the sea. This forms a key early food for Spoonbills, as discussed in a previous blog. Prawns increase in size and abundant later in the season and thus the saltmarsh colony breeds later.

So what do we need to get Spoonbills established as a breeding bird? A large wetland nesting site, secure from predation and disturbance, and large food-rich shallow wetlands. Birds may travel many miles between these sites.

Wandering on through dunes we saw numerous Bluethroats (60 pairs on Texel), Bittern (5 boomers in dune pools), abundant Marsh Helleborine and Fen Orchid of the subspecies ovata, with its more oval, hooded and erect leaves. Kentish Plover previously nested here but are now declining in The Netherlands, with the population down to c200 pairs, mainly in the delta region. The habitat looked good and was extensive but human disturbance is a problem.

A newly created scrape held many Little, Common and Arctic Terns, as well as 100+ pairs of Avocets. With increasing pressure on beaches, this is exactly the sort of conservation action that is required for our terns. Nearby we looked over a saltmarsh wader roost, holding 10,000+ each of Curlew, Oystercatcher and Knot, and 20,000+ Bar-tailed Godwits.