A ruff guide for new arrivals
THE SUMMER of Grub has arrived with food-lovers taking advantage of Dishy Rishi’s cut-price dishes and firing up barbecues in record temperatures.
Eating al fresco on the steamiest days of the year has become a welcome panacea to those lockdown lows of spring, but nature’s seasonal clock is always one click ahead.
As millions make the most of the sultry weather in a time of Covid, birds have already begun embracing autumn with epic odysseys over oceans and across continents.
For some species, winter migration back to Africa started before the summer solstice. Errant male cuckoos that fathered offspring two months ago are traversing the Sahara. Satellite tracking by the British Trust for Ornithology shows one bird called Valentine has already reached the African state of Mali.
With swallows, swifts and spotted flycatchers plotting similar journeys to points south, others are arriving here for respite after voyaging from Scandinavia and beyond.
One such visitor was a fine, upstanding male ruff that caught my eye as he paraded around an old gravel pit last week. Although having lost his eponymous ruff, the bird with tortoiseshell upper parts and long, slim legs strutted purposefully among shallow pools, taking on vital calories after an early departure from his summering grounds, most likely somewhere in Russia.
A likely reason for arriving in early August will be due to losing out in the breeding stakes to tougher, more aggressive rivals. Ruff are some of the feistiest of birds, with males “lekking” to prove themselves to the smaller, daintier females known as reeves. Besides displaying their ornate plumages, the males will fight and even draw blood in ceremonies that are likened to the displays of the Devil Dancers of Tibet.
Such spectaculars are rarely witnessed in Britain these days with only a dozen or so birds breeding here, yet once ruff were far more numerous. In Medieval times, ruff were served up at banquets, their exquisite flesh, ounce-for-ounce, the most expensive on the table.
Ruff have also had an impact on the English language. Those neck adornments worn by Elizabethan courtiers were named after the bird, rather than the other way round.
Reeve is believed to originate from “hreoh” – the Old English for aggressive behaviour – and the word was later adopted by the Anglo Saxons to describe a town magistrate. The word sheriff derives from the term: “shire reeve”. Watching the ruff tiptoeing his way among the small, invertebraterich pools alongside two green sandpipers and a handful of snipe and common sandpipers, brought home how vital the humblest wetlands are for migratory birds.
Pressures on land, particularly the oases where wildlife flourishes, have never been greater with the Government overhauling planning regulations “to get the country building”. Yet one can only be left fearing for pools, ponds and seasonal flashes that are not protected.
Much is being made of proposed legislation that will see more streets lined by trees but efforts must also be made to create wetland areas close to new developments.
Such spaces will play a key role in absorbing stormwater run-off and provide resting grounds for weary wading birds and breeding habitats for amphibians and invertebrates.
‘Wetlands are vital for waders’