Crakey! Change the record books.

Calling Baillon's in typically rushy habitat.

Last year, during a trip to The Netherlands, we speculated that Baillon’s Crake was being overlooked in the UK, both as a migrant and breeding bird.  With fortuitous timing, a national Spotted Crake survey has been undertaken this year and surveyors were asked to listen out for Baillon’s Crake.  And one was found!  A rapid e-mail to reserve managers to raise awareness of the possibility of Baillon’s resulted in at least 7 singing males at 3 sites across England and Wales, with a possible 2 more at 2 further sites.  Crakey!

So is Baillon’s Crake a scarce migrant and rare breeder in the UK rather than a vagrant?  Probably, but it is likely that the drought conditions in the Donana region of Spain earlier this year will have prompted more birds to move north looking for favourable conditions.  The drought appears to have affected a range of species.  We have seen influxes of Glossy Ibis and Black-winged Stilts, as well as Baillon's Crakes, and impacts on the movements of other birds, such as Spoonbills.   At least 3 pairs of stilts have attempted to breed in the UK as predicted in an earlier blog.   The Netherlands is also having a good year for Baillon's Crakes with at least 30 singing males.   However, 2005 was also good in The Netherlands yet failed to produce a record in the UK.   Were they overlooked?

Baillon’s Crakes can breed in small areas of suitable habitat; wet, low, tussocky but often open vegetation such as flooded sedges, rushes and grasses.  They also seem to like the edges of pools if this year’s birds are anything to go on.  Calls are poorly understood.  Although the best known is the short Garganey-like rattle of the male, at least 4 different calls have been heard from birds this year.  However, calls can be hard to hear in many conditions and they may not call that often!   Singing birds appear to be best heard between 22.30 and midnight at least, and with birds in The Netherlands known to arrive late, they may be singing well into July.   How many of this year’s birds will return next year?

 

 

Typical Baillon's habitat in The Netherlands (Ruud van Beusekom)

Beaver!

If there’s anything likely to make the Grumpy Ecologist un-grumpy it’s the Beaver.  The Beaver highlight of a three-day trip to north-east Scotland began by creeping knee-deep in water through a remote section of a nature reserve on a gloomy evening, with steady drizzle of course.  A Spotted Crake briefly whipped from a fantastically crakey marsh, a Marsh Harrier flew by, and then there it was: an initially unrecognised turd deposited in a super-highway of a path out of the water. Suddenly we were at Beaver-central; fallen trees, dragged branches, pathways and a possible lodge.  Fantastic!

The day had begun at the Loch of Strathbeg; at the UK’s largest dune loch.  A brief search along the Loch shore for Creeping Spearwort (or its hybrid with Lesser Spearwort) always looked likely to fail due to unseasonably high water levels but a summer plumaged Slavonian Grebe, 35 Goldeneye and a flyby Bonxie kept us happy. The rushy Low Ground in front of the visitor centre, now grazed by a herd of Koniks held a couple of hundred Curlew and a summering pair of Whooper Swan, while botanical interest was provided by Lesser Butterfly Orchid and the remarkably insignificant, but scarce, Mudwort.  After some hours looking at the management of the reserve, the drive south took us past the disgraceful Trump’s Folly and down to Blackdog for the scoter and Eider flocks harbouring Black Scoter and Surf Scoter. All paled into insignificance compared with the soon-to-be new addition to my British wildlife poo collection (the first since Wallaby on the IOM).

Now if any extinct animal should be returned to the UK, it is the Beaver (and then the Lynx).  However, potential introductions have become bogged down in ridiculous controversy and ‘fence-sitting’. Meanwhile, Beavers have done it for themselves, escaping from captivity on the River Tay and spreading out over recent years.  Why is the Beaver so important? Well, the Beaver is an ‘ecosystem engineer’; one of the few species that can significantly change the geomorphology and hydrology of the landscape.  In doing so, Beavers have been shown to increase habitat and species diversity at the landscape scale.  By the beginning of the 20th century, hunting had reduced the European populations of Beaver to a low ebb of some 1,000 individuals.  Then, as recognition of its qualities grew, re-introductions progressed across Europe, beginning in Sweden as long ago as 1922.  Over the last 80 years, Beavers have been reintroduced to 27 countries on mainland Europe, with the UK being one of the few exceptions. Despite this, Scottish Natural Heritage embarrassingly tried to remove the Tay freedom fighters.  More can be found out about the Tay Beavers here.  Let’s hope they are here to stay.

At Loch of Strathbeg: Koniks, Whooper and Mudwort.

More Essex

Scarce Emerald (Lestes dryas) and getting down to the hard-grasses, looking at the diminutive anthers of Curved hard-grass (Parapholis incurva - left) next to Hard-grass (P. strigosa - right).

Following the Essex theme, last week provided the opportunity to look around a rarely visited south-east corner of the county.  The seawalls and borrow-dykes provide the habitat for some local botanical specialities; Slender Hare’-s-ear, Sea Barley, Stiff Saltmarsh-grass and Curved Hard-grass were all duly noted.  The saline borrow-dykes supported Spiral Tasselweed and the specialist lagoonal isopod Idotea chelipes, whilst the more brackish pools had Scarce Emerald Damselfly and Hairy Dragonfly.  The bird highlights included 5 Short-eared Owls and 6 Whimbrel, as well as breeding Redshanks and Shelduck.

A Little Sterner

Beauty and the beast: the problems for the Little Tern.

The two-day tour of the Essex coast was primarily to look at the fortunes of the Little Tern.  By the time we had finished, and understood the problems, we were all a little sterner.  Little Terns have not been doing well recently; in Essex or further afield in the south-east.  They suffer from disturbance by humans, competition from gulls and flooding from high tides.  And everything seems to like to eat them; from Foxes, Stoats and Hedgehogs, to Kestrels and owls.  Much of this comes down to an increasing lack of safe nesting sites on our over-crowded coastlines.

Whilst the beaches clearly have disturbance issues, the Essex coast has many small saltmarsh islands amongst its estuaries and creeks.  We found 3,500+ pairs of Black-headed Gull, 100+ pairs of Herring Gull, 56 pairs of Common Tern, 30+ pairs of Oystercatcher and 8 pairs of Ringed Plover.  More surprisingly, a total of 29 Mediterranean Gulls were noted, including at least 6 on nests.  Little Terns amounted to 41 nesting pairs, with 20 or so additional birds.

The islands perhaps provide an answer for the Little Terns.  Many of the nesting pairs are on areas of dumped dredging or shellfish remains.  The saltmarsh islands are not attractive nor very accessible to people or ground predators.  A partnership with harbourmasters and fishery interests might bring about the regular recharging of small areas of suitable nesting habitat for the terns.

Elsewhere in East Anglia, news is of mixed fortunes for Little Terns, with the usual problems of flooding out and predation.  However, up to 200 pairs near Winterton is excellent and North Norfolk may still have 400 active nests. A spell of calm weather might be helpful!

Red-breasted Devaluation

Geese in Essex - Red-breasted last winter and broods of Barnacles yesterday.

Just to remind you, here’s a photo of a Red-breasted Goose in Essex from last winter.  I saw it again yesterday, or did I? I certainly saw a Red-breasted Goose; holding territory on an Essex coastal marsh, with a female tucked away on a nest.  Last year this pair raised four young.

I was visiting an area of coastal marshland at the invitation of the landowner during a two-day tour of sites on the Essex coast.  The landowner is a farmer who ‘likes his birds’.  The most obvious thing about this well-managed land was that it was teeming with young birds; waders, geese and duck.  There were around 70 pairs of Avocets (many with well-grown young), 5 pair of Ringed Plover, 20 pairs of Little Terns, 1,000 pairs of Black-headed Gulls and many Redshank.  I saw broods of Gadwall, Tufted Duck and Shoveler.  The landowner operates a minimal disturbance policy and ‘discourages’ ground predators such as Foxes and Stoats. There were also many geese, including about 80 pairs of Barnacles and the pair of Red-breasted.  I saw around 20 broods of Barnacle Geese.  A fascinating site, but somewhat alarming if you want to think the Red-breasted Goose you are chasing is wild.

Northern snippets

Choughs, The Oa and a fat, juicy tipulid larva.

A welcome change of scenery last week looking at reserve issues on Islay, with The Oa and Loch Gruinart being the main sites visited.  An Otter in the bay below the campsite at Port Charlotte was a good start.  Management for Chough was one focus of the visit.  They prefer places with short, grazed pasture, less than 5 cm in height, and soft soils where they can probe to find food.  A specialist feeder on invertebrates, they will take beetles and their larvae, fly larvae (especially tipulid (Cranefly) larvae), ants, their grubs and pupae, and spiders.  Dung invertebrates are an important source of food.   Such food resources can be patchily distributed, as we found by sampling various areas of turf but we did turn up some particularly juicy tipulids in a key feeding area.

Marsh Fritillary butterflies are locally frequent on Islay. Attack by parasitoid wasps appears to have an important effect on the population dynamics of the butterfly and may help to explain its requirement for large habitat patches. Two parasitiod wasp species, Cotesia bignellii and C. melitaearum, are present in the UK  and are of conservation importance in their own right, one being specific to the Marsh Fritillary. Studies suggest that the parasitoid and its host may have a shifting metapopulation distribution, with the butterfly 'escaping' parasitism in some areas by dispersal and colonisation, with local extinctions occurring in other areas.

A Marsh Frit caterpillar with cocoons of emerged parasitiod wasp larvae.

Highlights of the trip included 30+ Chough, 6 crekking Corncrakes, 4 Golden Eagles, Hen Harrier, Tystie and Great Northern Diver.  Loch Grunart produced Corncrake and Quail calling together in front of a pair of Whooper Swans.  As well as an approachable flock of 20+ Chough, Ardnave Point also produced a typically tame migrant Dotterel.  And all this sandwiched between a daily menu of various local delicacies; from full Scottish breakfast with ‘square’ sausage and tattie scone through to sampling the local whiskies.

Every cloud....

Black-tailed Godwit and Snipe

On balance, this spring is not shaping up to be a great one for the 50 or so pairs of breeding Black-tailed Godwits in the UK, with their primary locations on the Nene and Ouse Washes both flooded out by the heavy April rains...but every cloud has a silver lining so they say.   I visited the Nene this week; floodwaters are receding and although both Godwits and Snipe were busy displaying overhead, surely time is running out for the Godwits to produce many young this year.  There is an increasing urgency to attract them to new sites, either existing or created, that do not function as storage washlands for summer downpours.   So what do they require?

Godwits favour large, open wet grasslands and marshland.  A Dutch meadow-bird conference I attended some years back explained their dislike of ‘up-going structures’ as the Dutch liked to call them, and this included trees, hedges, buildings and the like.   They like to see in all directions.   After arrival on the breeding grounds, adult godwits require grasslands rich in soil invertebrates, probing for earthworms where high water tables push them close to the surface. They also seek out shallow pools as safe roosting sites.  The chicks have different requirements.  They seem to require longish (20cm) grass, often flower-rich but always with an abundance of invertebrates, particularly flies and beetles, amongst the vegetation. The density of the vegetation is important, with sparser swards preferred for the chicks to forage amongst.

A particular problem appears to be their attachment to natal locations and their slow colonisation of new sites.  So both the RSPB and WWT have been busy creating new habitat on ex-arable farmland adjacent to, but outside, the Ouse Washes to try and attract breeding Godwits.   After some years of ‘maturing’ habitat, an excited text from the site manager over the weekend brought the news that the first Black-tailed Godwit chicks had hatched on the new RSPB land.  Somewhat ironically, the heavy rain and resultant flood has pushed the few remaining Ouse Washes Godwits onto both the RSPB and WWT new habitat. Let’s hope they stay there.