Ingham’s W RLD
FOR the past few weeks Brits have been able to indulge in one of their favourite pastimes: cursing a rain-sodden summer. But in among the reedbeds our birds are quite happy, says the British Trust for Ornithology. This summer, for all its faults, has seen record breeding numbers of exotic herons usually found in southern Europe. They have been joined by arguably Europe’s most colourful bird, the dainty bee-eater, which normally keeps close to the Mediterranean sun.
The cast of exotic characters is impressive. Night heron, cattle egret, great white egret, black-winged stilts and spoonbill have all bred here.
Normally we would expect most of them to be stalking the shallows hundreds of miles further south.
But the wet weather we all bemoan may have helped them establish their bridgehead.
Paul Stancliffe of the BTO said southern Europe has had a particularly dry summer so some waterbirds may have flown north in search of damper conditions. Meanwhile the continental warmth encouraged the bee-eaters to just keep going north. They stopped in Nottinghamshire’s East Leake quarry where they are rearing young in three nests, protected by RSPB staff.
The summer’s stars are night herons, medium-sized, grey, black crowned, red-eyed herons, which have bred for the first time in the UK. Two adults and two youngsters are roosting at Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Westhay Moor National Nature Reserve after breeding there or on the nearby Avalon Marshes.
Fifteen pairs of spoonbill, large white herons with long spoonshaped bills, have bred in Norfolk and Yorkshire. Cattle egret have raised 15 young in Somerset, Dorset and Cheshire.
Black-winged stilt, which like cattle egrets normally stray no closer than the Gallic side of the Channel, have had their best-ever year, with 13 chicks in Kent, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.
The RSPB says more stilts fledged here this year than over the past 33 years. And more are coming and looking for nest sites.
There are hopes that all these long-legged southern species will follow the example of another sunloving relative: the little egret. It first bred here in Dorset in 1996, found Britain to its liking and at the last count boasted at least 700 breeding pairs. These snow-white birds with long black legs and yellow feet are now perfectly at home on our wetlands.
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