Lucky to see snow buntings
MANY moons ago I was lucky enough to spot three snow buntings skimming through Longdendale, and the Arctic birds looked right at home as we were in the middle of a December white-out, and this in the days before the A628 was cleared of snow as soon as possible.
It was a fleeting glimpse as they rose a few feet above the Woodhead embankment, hardy as you like, straight into a north easterly. I remember our power was off, the telephone down, no coal and just one bottle of Bushmills left; times were hard at Woodhead in 1981.
Weighing no more than a golf ball, this small graceful bird with its striking ‘snowy’ plumage is one of the rarest breeding birds in the UK. Globally, they breed around the Arctic from Scandinavia to Alaska, Canada and Greenland but a small breeding population can be found up the highest peaks of Scotland.
During June 2011, a team of scientists and volunteers led by the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage scaled mountains in the Cairngorms and the Highlands to listen out for singing males.
The survey involved searching 58 sites covering an impressive 12,000ha – the equivalent of more than 14,800 football pitches – and analyses published this month shows that the first estimate for the national snow bunting population was 60 pairs.
Fieldwork in the UK doesn’t come much more challenging than surveying snow buntings up some of the highest peaks in Scotland.
During the survey the team were climbing 3,000ft mountains each day while battling the extreme weather conditions that can be found at the peaks.
During the summer, snow buntings can only be found on our highest peaks in Scotland, where they breed near the mountain tops.
There has always been an element of mystery surrounding the number of snow buntings in the UK as never before have all sites been surveyed in a single year.
Now we have an estimate of the national breeding population we’ll be able to use these findings to detect any change in their numbers, allowing us to better understand how changes to their mountain environment might be impacting them.
For a scarce species occupying some of the harshest more remote habitats in the UK, dedicated surveys such as this are the only way to monitor their population effectively.
In the future, this survey will allow scientists to monitor any changes in the snow bunting population, which is key to understanding how they’re responding to the changes in their mountain environment.
Males in summer have all white heads and underparts contrasting with a black mantle and wing tips.
Females are more mottled above.
In autumn and winter birds develop a sandy/ buff wash to their plumage and males have more mottled upperparts.
They are more widespread in winter in the north and east when residents are joined by continental birds.
Prior to the commencement of ringing studies, it was thought that the majority of Snow Buntings wintering in Britain were from Scandinavia and Greenland. However studies in Scotland revealed that only about 20 per cent of the birds caught were of the Scandinavian/Greenland race, with the majority being of the Icelandic race.
Similar studies in The Netherlands have also shown that both races winter there but the ratio of natives is usually greater.
This project was begun in 1991 to study the racial composition and sex ratio of snow buntings wintering on the north Norfolk coast.
We have found that both the Scandinavian/ Greenland race and the Icelandic race occur in mixed flocks on the Norfolk coast in winter.
They tend to favour certain locations with flocks sometimes numbering several hundred.
The foraging range of these flocks is large and there is often considerable interchange between flocks with small groups and individuals leaving one flock and joining another.
The project ran from 1991 until 2000 and more than 1,800 were caught and ringed, and also colour-ringed with individually recognisable combinations.
This has generated an incredible number of sightings of ringed birds, which has enabled us to build a large database of movements of these individuals both within and between winters. Colour ringing has also produced an incredible number of recoveries, far more than could be expected from metal rings alone.
Birds were marked with a combination of three colours on one leg and with either just a metal (BTO) ring or with the addition of a single colour (which can be above or below metal) on the other. These combinations identify individuals uniquely.