Monthly Archives: August 2021

Celebrating a record-breaking year for Cornish choughs

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From Cornwall Birdwatching and Preservation Society (CBWPS) with particular thanks to Hilary Mitchell. Photos are by Lynn Colliver and CBWPS

Celebrations this summer as the population of chough in Kernow (Cornwall) is finally bouncing back after over two decades of conservation efforts. Every year their numbers have grown, but this year has been exceptional. They are now well on their way to becoming a healthy and resilient population.  

In 2021, 23 pairs of Cornish chough bred successfully, raising a record breaking 66 young. A huge achievement for a bird once extinct in Kernow, but even greater against a backdrop of decreasing chough populations elsewhere in the UK. Not all the young will survive to adulthood and raise families themselves, but the higher the number of fledglings that survive each year the more robust the birds become against extinction in the future. 

Recolonisation has expanded in 2021 with several more pairs between Godrevy and Newquay. The furthest north remains Padstow with no choughs beyond the Camel Estuary. As far as we know…. This year also saw some co-parenting with two males (brothers) paired with the same female, the trio going on to fledge three chicks. The county’s oldest males (aged 15 and 16) also bred successfully again, raising four chicks each. Two 12-year old females also reared young (one with the 15-year old male). 

It has taken decades of close partnership work to get Kernow’s choughs back to this positive result. From the conservation expertise of the RSPB; to the passion of Kernow’s nature-friendly farmers and land managers who have brought back grazing to the cliffs; the vital funding for this land management from Natural England; the collaboration of conservation organisations like The National Trust; and the dedication of volunteers who monitor the birds to make this a conservation success story.   

The National Trust manage key areas of Cornwall’s coastline, which the chough call home and now manage a team of volunteers that monitor the chough on their land. Kate Evans, National Trust Senior Visitor Experience Officer, said: “We are thrilled to see numbers of Cornish chough increase year on year. It’s with thanks to the passionate volunteers who give their time and who are dedicated to monitoring choughs, that we are able to build a picture of this growing chough population”. 

The return of the chough to Kernow has been no small feat. It has only been achievable through close partnership work and the support of an amazing team of volunteers. The growing success of the Cornish chough is also testament to the hard work of nature-friendly farmers and landowners who provide the right homes for Kernow’s choughs to survive and thrive.  

Jenny Parker, RSPB Cornwall Reserves Warden, said: “We want to thank everyone involved in surveying and providing the conditions for chough to flourish.  Our volunteers play a pivotal role locating and verifying chough nest sites every spring and all around the Cornish coast, this information is then relayed to landowners, who with our help and guidance can help chough thrive.”  

Nicola Shanks, RSPB volunteer, added: “It has taken a while, but finally the tide has turned for chough in Kernow. With continued good land management and the protection of safe nest and roost spots, it will ensure their future here and their spread up the coast into Devon and beyond”. 

However, the next chapter of the Cornish chough’s story is in all of our hands – if you see chough in Cornwall please email your sightings to our newest partner the Cornwall Birdwatching and Preservation Society (CBWPS) at: choughs@cbwps.org.uk.  

Hilary Mitchell, CBWPS volunteer, said: “We couldn’t do it without all the people that report their sightings to us, thanks to each and every one of them”.  

CBWPS will continue to play a key role collating chough records and informing all partners of their whereabouts as we move into a new chapter of the Cornish Choughs remarkable recovery.  

Restoring the chough to Kent

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From Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Trust

Choughs were once an iconic species on the White Cliffs of Dover. Kent Wildlife Trust along with partners, the Wildwood Trust, English Heritage and Paradise Park, are bringing an aviary of choughs to Dover Castle for the public to experience a forgotten history.

Learn all about the choughs’ rich, but perhaps forgotten, Kentish heritage embedded in legends such as the murder of Thomas Becket, and immortalised at Shakespeare Cliff in King Lear.

These iconic birds, which are part of the crow family, fell victim to intensive farming practices and historical persecution, leading to widespread extinction with only small populations surviving in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man (and Jersey).

Can you imagine seeing a chough flying over the White Cliffs of Dover for the first time in over 200 years?

The Dover Castle aviary is the first step in the vision to reintroduce choughs to Kent. Dover’s chalk grasslands and white cliffs provide nest sites and rich diversity of insects on which choughs feed.  We want to create a Wilder Kent by restoring this charismatic but threatened bird, with its glossy black plumage, red legs and bright red beak.

Thomas Becket, King Henry, Canterbury and the chough 

Many will know the story of the murder of Thomas Becket, last year marked 850 years since his dramatic murder, but you may be less familiar with a mythical connection to the chough.

It is rumoured that as Thomas lay dying, a crow flew down and by paddling in his blood it acquired a startling red beak and feet, transforming into a chough.

There was a huge public reaction to Thomas’s death. Pilgrims began to arrive at Canterbury Cathedral from across Europe and King Henry II received many high-status visitors. 

Henry invested in Dover Castle, creating the great tower keep as a fitting venue, suitable for important travellers on their way to Canterbury, and making it truly ‘fit for a king’. 

Sometime after his death, Thomas was attributed a coat of arms featuring three choughs, which first appears about 100 years later in Canterbury Cathedral, and, in the 14th century, the City of Canterbury adopted a coat of arms with three choughs and a royal lion. But no one really knows why the chough became associated with Thomas, other than the legend of the blooded crow. Whatever its origin, the chough has a long history in heraldry in glass, sculpture, coats of arms, flags, and even pub signs!

Dover Castle

Kent Wildlife Trust, Wildwood Trust and English Heritage will unveil a brand new chough aviary at Dover Castle this month. Visitors will now be able to get up close to four young red-billed choughs, who will be living at the aviary, and learn more about their cultural and ecological significance in Kent.

The choughs living in the aviary hatched earlier this year at Wildwood Trust, as part of a breeding programme to help reverse falling numbers of the chough population across the UK. A dedicated team of keepers from Wildwood have spent the past three months rearing and training the choughs in preparation for their move to the castle.

 

Don’t worry, birds won’t become dependent on you feeding them

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From Good News Network

Oregon State University researchers have some good news for those of us well-meaning who place bird feeders in their gardens: the small songbirds who visit the feeders seem unlikely to develop an unhealthy reliance on them.

“There’s still much we don’t know about how intentional feeding might induce changes in wild bird populations, but our study suggests that putting out food for small birds in winter will not lead to an increased dependence on human-provided food,” said Jim Rivers, an animal ecologist with the OSU College of Forestry.

Around the globe each year, hundreds of millions of people put out food for wildlife, including 50 million in the United States alone, driving a $4 billion industry based on food, feeders, and other accessories.

But the popular pastime has long raised concerns about making animals dependent on human-provided food—especially during wintertime and other parts of the annual cycle that require animals to expend a lot of energy.

“The extensive and widespread nature of people intentionally feeding wildlife can have unintended consequences for free-ranging animal populations, and those consequences are best documented in birds,” Rivers said.

“On the negative side, it can facilitate disease transmission, restructure local communities, and alter migration behavior, for example. There’s even evidence that it can lead to changes to birds’ bill structure. On the other hand, it can also have positive effects, such as enhanced body condition, wintertime survival, and reproductive output.”

Bird feeding is especially popular in the northern latitudes, particularly during winter, when cold, stormy weather and minimal daylight reduce the time that birds have for locating natural foods. But not much is known, Rivers said, about whether birds become reliant on the feed their human friends put out for them.

“The only manipulative experiment to test that, using the black-capped chickadee (a species similar to the great tit), was 30 years ago,” he said. “It found no reductions in apparent survival after removal of bird feeders that had provided supplemental food in winter for 25 years, leading to the conclusion that bird feeding did not promote feeder dependency.”

Rivers and colleagues studied the feeder use habits of 67 black-capped chickadees subjected to one of three flight-feather-clipping treatments: heavy clipping, light clipping or, as the control, no clipping. Experimental removal of primary flight feathers is an established technique for altering wing loading and increasing the energy costs of flight, Rivers said.

The birds were tagged with RFID (radio frequency identification) chips, and 21 bird feeders along a 3.2 kilometre riparian zone were filled with sunflower seeds and equipped with chip readers to measure feeder visits by tagged birds.

Scientists chose the chickadee because it is a small songbird (it weighs less than half an ounce) that frequents bird feeders during winter throughout its range; has high daily energy requirements; and typically takes one seed at each feeder visit, allowing for a clear measure of feeder visitation rate.

“It’s an ideal species for evaluating how energetic challenges lead to behavioural changes in feeder use during winter,” Rivers said. “Our study found that the experimentally handicapped chickadees, those experiencing elevated flight costs, did not increase their rates of visitation to the feeders.”

Instead, feather-clipped birds actually decreased their feeder use for a couple of weeks— possibly to reduce exposure to predation—but after that used the feeders at levels similar to the unclipped control birds. The researchers looked at number of feeder visits, number of feeders used and timing of feeder visits and found little difference between clipped and non-clipped chickadees.

“Feather-clipped chickadees reducing their use of feeders relative to control birds suggests that foods in the environment—like seeds, berries and small invertebrates—were sufficiently available to compensate for increased flight costs and allowed them to cut back on feeder use,” Rivers said.

“It’s clear that the chickadees in our study did not increase their visitation rates nor did they increase their reliance on supplemental feed during a period when they might have benefited from it the most.”

The paper Experimentally induced flight costs do not lead to increased reliance on supplemental food in winter by a small songbird can be accessed here