Not choughed with your bird report

Errors have crept into your report about the chough (Bird To Take Pride Of Place Again, March 16). First is your photograph of the wrong species, alpine chough. This closely related species is unknown in Britain and differs mainly in its shorter yellow bill (and this particular bird appears to have been photographed in Switzerland in 2010 see Wikipedia Commons).

“Our” bird has a bright crimson beak hence the more precise name red-billed chough. The second error is the claim that chough “is one of the UK’S rarest birds and was deemed extinct across the entire country”. Whilst the first part of the statement is reasonably accurate, the suggestion that it became extinct in the UK is not.

Although they last successfully bred in England in 1947 in Cornwall (and a lone bird persisted there until 1973), choughs have continued to breed in the wilder coastal regions of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland (plus the Isle of Man) with about 400 pairs (with still more in the Republic of Ireland).

The third error is the claim that a small population was rediscovered in Cornwall in 1990. Their surprising recolonisation in that county happened in 2001.

Finally, while their “aerial acrobatics” are extraordinary, it’s unlikely that they will ‘thrill’ visitors to Wildwood since being confined to an aviary, however large, will not allow a display remotely as impressive as that seen in the wild.

In Kent, their extinction is usually given as 1840 or 1850 but there’s a suspicion that the native population died out earlier in the 1770s and that birds reported later in the 1800s were reintroduced from their Cornish stronghold.

Sadly, Peter Smith’s opinion that a successful reintroduction could only happen following “major changes to how we use the land and the chemicals that we pour on to it” is all too accurate.

To survive the chough needs, among other things, a large area of heavily grazed, well manured, unimproved coastal grassland, winter stubble and the careful use of de-worming drugs to allow plenty of dung rich in invertebrate fauna (which some drugs eliminate).

Such a combination of habitat and circumstances currently does not exist in Kent. Hence talk of any reintroduction is very premature and owes more to optimistic publicity than reality, John Cantelo Clyde Street Canterbury “villagers” on Faussett Hill (B2068) moaning about speeding traffic.

To me this is not a “village” just a few houses on one side of a main road, will this fall under Mr Sole’s definition of a village and be 20mph?

If so, it would seem that every road rural or town will become 20mph, so it will be back to the horse and cart age of very limited travel! Terry Hudson Russell Drive, Swalecliffe