BIRDS ON THE EDGE has highlighted the threats to our finches and other songbirds from diseases such as the parasitic trichomonosis and avian pox being spread among the birds. The larger population consequences of these parasitic diseases, however, are rarely documented. A recent study in the journal Ibis has looked at the extent to which the trichomonosis epidemic affected the Finnish population sizes of European greenfinch, chaffinch and a control species, great tit, and the body condition of greenfinches.
The disease was first documented in Finland in 2008 and epidemics were observed mainly in south-western Finland. Greenfinches showed a significant decline of 47% in breeding numbers and 65% in wintering numbers in southern Finland during 2006 – 2010. Breeding chaffinch numbers showed a slight decline (4%) during the same study period that was significant only in central Finland. Great tit did not show a significant change in breeding numbers. During the initial disease epidemic the body condition of all demographic groups of greenfinches decreased equally, suggesting that the disease was not selective in respect of age or sex. There were no encounters of Finnish ringed greenfinches or chaffinches in the UK, which could indicate that the parasite has not necessarily been transferred directly from the UK, but perhaps by migrants from Sweden and Germany.
In conclusion, the Finnish greenfinch population has faced rapid and severe population decline due to an epidemic of finch trichomonosis, but the effect on chaffinches has been minor. The decline of greenfinches has been greater than in neighbouring Sweden and of the same order as in UK, where the epidemic was first observed. The study further emphasizes the importance of annual monitoring schemes now and especially in the future in order to detect rapid population changes in common bird species that may be caused by disease epidemics. Bird counts in Jersey have repeatedly shown a very rapid and dramatic decline in numbers of greenfinches in recent years.
In March 2013 one hundred and seventy-five pairs of Atlantic puffins will return to the small island of Burhou which is situated two kilometres north-west of Alderney to breed. The seabirds will live and raise their young on the rocky coastline for a few months before they return to sea with their young, in the puffin’s case their ‘puffling’ chicks.
A Puffin Season on Burhou is an exciting project offering schools in the South East of England and the Channel Islands the opportunity to bring the fascinating life of the puffin live into their classrooms. Using the charismatic puffin as a focal point, this project links directly to the Keystage 1 & 2 curriculum, and is an effective way of teaching Science and Literacy skills, and promoting pupil creativity. This website will provide schools with daily 24 hour updates, live streamed video and a range of other excellent features to keeps schools and pupils informed about developments on the island of Burhou.
Teaching & Learning Resources
To support the project teachers and pupils will be able to access and download a range of excellent Teaching & Learning resources from the project website. Schools can opt to follow the 12 week project plan or select activities from the project menu. Designed for use with Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils these include:
Science activities linked to popular topics including adaptation, life cycles, food chains, habitats, caring for the young and conservation and protection
Daily and weekly mathematical data providing pupils with information about puffin numbers, frequency, location, climate and daily weather reports
Literacy activities – including opportunities to work with our project author
Geography & History – Information about the relief, climate and history of Alderney
Plus Art/Design and ICT activities for pupils of all ages.
Interested in taking part in this exciting science based project?
The project will commence at the start of the Term 5 and run until the end of the first week in July.
Please note, spaces for Channel Island schools are now fully booked. If you would like to be kept informed about the project please contact Living Islands: Live
The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology has been receiving reports of an Atlantic puffin wreck (multiple unusual deaths) on the east coast of Scotland and the north-east of England.
It appears that, while the exact causes of these deaths are currently unknown, the birds have died of starvation, unable to feed in the recent bad weather and strong easterly winds. This incident is likely to be the biggest ‘wreck’ since 1947 and research will be done this summer to see how it affects the northern colonies of puffins. Numbers of guillemots and razorbills have also been picked up after, presumably, suffering the same fate. The RSPB have added that as we are fast approaching the start of the seabird breeding season, where tens of thousands of seabirds return to their colonies to raise their young, the recent events could have an impact on the success of this year’s puffin breeding season. Puffins are already suffering population declines.
No reports of a puffin wreck have occurred in the lower regions of the species range, and the Channel Islands have not received as much bad weather as the north of the UK.
Although the puffins arrived back on Burhou, Alderney, later this year than last, a good number were recorded by the remote camera (see Living Islands Live). It is unlikely that the wreck will affect Burhou, but in the event that anyone does find any dead puffins washing onto shorelines in the Channel Islands, particularly Alderney, please report them immediately to ecologist@alderneywildlife.org. Thank you.
This survey aims to establish the number and location of breeding pairs of selected bird species within the BIRDS ON THE EDGE project area i.e. the Island’s coastal land. We will set out to do this in several sections of the coastland and will start with the north-west coast from L’Étacq to Sorel Point. Data collected will not only allow us to map the most important areas on this coast for the focal bird species (see Birds) but can also be used in future studies on population trends.
We cannot expect to look at all possible bird species so will concentrate on the following ones:
Linnet
Stonechat
Skylark
Common whitethroat
Dartford warbler
Meadow pipit
Jackdaw
Raven
Peregrine falcon
Kestrel
We will also restrict the survey to a narrow strip along the coast as we already know that none of these birds, except the kestrel, nests further than only a few metres almost, inland from the coastal cliff path. The widest area of habitat suitable for these species is at Les Landes as they do not breed in developed or farmed land. It is likely too that a very high proportion of Jersey’s entire breeding population of several of these species is restricted to the north-west coast.
Methodology
The number and location of the chosen bird species will be established by using information provided through existing ongoing surveys including the Farmland Bird Survey transects at Sorel Pont (two transects), Crabbé and at Les Landes (two transects) and the BTO Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) squares in the area.
The gaps in the study area between the transects and BBS squares will be surveyed by a team of volunteer observers co-ordinated through the Société Jersiaise Ornithology Section. The observers will record the location of breeding pairs and breeding behaviours such as singing, territorial displays, nest-building and food delivery to the nests by direct observation from the coastal path. Each observer will be given maps and a handheld GPS so that they can mark the location of each observation. In many cases more than one visit by different observers might be needed to confirm the location and status of the breeding site.
Results
This quick, easy and enjoyable bird survey will give BIRDS ON THE EDGE invaluable data for producing maps showing the location of each of the most important bird species and numbers that we can compare with repeat surveys over the years. We will also enlarge the survey to cover other stretches of the coast in the next few years.
If anyone is interested in contributing to the survey by spending an hour or two on our beautiful coastline watching the birds please make contact through this website.
A new study in North America has identified acutely toxic pesticides as the most likely leading cause of the widespread decline in grassland bird numbers in the United States, a finding that challenges the widely-held assumption that loss of habitat is the primary cause of those population declines. Download the study for free here
Although this study focusses on the situation in North America it does state that: Common agricultural birds are in decline, both in Europe and in North America. Evidence from Europe suggests that agricultural intensification and, for some species, the indirect effects of pesticides mediated through a loss of insect food resource is in part responsible (for declines).
The scientific assessment, which looked at data over a 23-year period (1980 to 2003) has just been published. The study looked at five potential causes of grassland bird declines besides lethal pesticide risk: change in cropped pasture such as hay or alfalfa production, farming intensity or the proportion of agricultural land that is actively cropped, herbicide use, overall insecticide use, and change in permanent pasture and rangeland.
“What this study suggests is that we need to start paying a lot more attention to the use of pesticides if we want to reverse, halt or simply slow the very significant downward trend in grassland bird populations. Our study put the spotlight on acutely toxic insecticides used in our cropland starting after the Second World War and persisting to this day – albeit at a lower level. The data suggest that loss of birds in agricultural fields is more than an unfortunate consequence of pest control; it may drive bird populations to local extinction,” co-author Pierre Mineau said.
Many grassland bird species have undergone range contractions or population declines in recent decades. In fact, analyses of North American birds indicate that these birds are declining faster than birds from other biomes (a situation mirrored in Europe). Habitat protection has long been considered a central pillar in efforts to stem the decline of grassland bird species.
“We are still concerned about loss of habitat in agriculture, range management, and urban development,” said Cynthia Palmer, manager of the Pesticides Programme at American Bird Conservancy. “This study by no means diminishes the importance of habitat fragmentation and degradation. But it suggests that we also need to rein in the use of lethal pesticides in agriculture, and that we need to be especially careful about any new pesticides we introduce into these ecosystems such as the neonicotinoid insecticides. It reminds us that the poisonings of birds and other wildlife chronicled a half century ago by famed biologist and author Rachel Carson are by no means a thing of the past.”
The study found that lethal pesticides were nearly four times more likely to be associated with population declines than the next most likely contributor, changes in cropped pasture – an important component of habitat loss associated with agricultural lands. The publication says that “…..large quantities of products of very high toxicity to birds have been used for decades despite evidence that poisonings were frequent even when products were applied according to label directions.”
The authors argue that only a small proportion of total cropland needs to be treated with a dangerous pesticide to affect overall bird population trends. Pesticide drift from croplands is also affecting birds that favour the adjoining grasslands.
The study found that declines of grassland birds were much more likely in states with high use of toxic insecticides lethal to birds. The current study relies on pesticide data from the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when organophosphates such as Diazinon and Chlorpyrifos, and carbamates such as Carbofuran and Methomyl, were still largely in vogue. Since that time, a new class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, have soared to the top of global pesticide markets. Unfortunately, a major toxicological assessment soon to be released by American Bird Conservancy puts to rest any notion that birds and other organisms will fare much better under the new pesticide regime. Neonicotinoids have also been implicated in declines of bees – see the latest RSPB statement on use of these pesticides here
The journal British Birds has published an updated estimate of bird populations in Great Britain and the UK. This follows previous estimates published in 1997 and 2006. There are now thought to be about 84 million breeding pairs of birds in the UK. The ten commonest species contribute 57% of this total, with wren alone providing one in ten of the country’s breeding birds (with 8,600,000 breeding territories). In all, 23 species exceed one million breeding pairs. The individual population estimates come from a wide variety of sources, many from extrapolation of previous estimates by recognised trend measures, others from new surveys and novel analytical approaches developed since the last report. Despite the exceptional level of detail available for some species, many gaps in our knowledge remain. Recommendations are made in the report to allow a continuing improvement in our understanding of the numbers of birds in GB and the UK. There are many opportunities for volunteer and amateur birdwatchers to make a significant contribution.
Although the figures do not include birds from the Channel Islands the species that BIRDS ON THE EDGE are concerned with are in the list (2006 figures are in brackets):
Peregrine 1,500 pairs in UK and Isle of Man (1,283)
Atlantic puffin 580,000 breeding pairs (580,799)
Turtle dove 14,000 breeding territories (44,000)
Cuckoo 16,000 breeding pairs (9,600-20,000)
Red-billed chough 930-940 individuals in UK and 450 individuals in Isle of Man (total 1,360-1,367)
The 12th Great Garden Bird Watch takes place this weekend, Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd February
Islanders are urged to become involved in monitoring bird life in the Island. The event is coordinated by Action for Wildlife Jersey in conjunction with the Jersey Evening Post (JEP) and all data received will be passed on to La Société Jersiaise to add to their records and included in BIRDS ON THE EDGE bird monitoring analyses. Data from past years’ surveys were included in the 2011 assessment of our birds that became the Island’s first bird redlist The Conservation Status of Jersey’s Birds which can be downloaded here.
How to enter the survey
Watch the birds in your garden for any period between
8 am and 11 am on either the Saturday or the Sunday. Note the highest number of each species of bird that you see together at one time during that period – not the total number which enter your garden over the period of the watch. Survey forms and a handy identification guide will be published in the JEP on Thursday the 31st.
Completed forms can be posted in or delivered to the JEP or there is a convenient form for submitting records on line here.
The current cold spell in north-west Europe will have been accompanied by the usual media activity in many places. Much of the news generated will focus on the regular “why weren’t we better prepared” headlines. One group, however, that know exactly what to do when snow comes in the area are the many thousands of birds that winter in the region. While resident birds not used to such cold weather might have to make do, those species that have come from further north are quick to up and move until they find something more suitable. The most obvious places for these versatile wanderers to head for are the coast and offshore islands that are usually much milder than inland areas. And so, with the snowfall on Friday, Jersey welcomed many thousands of new arrivals.
The usual clue to a cold-weather migration of this sort is the presence of lapwings on verges and every small field. While big flocks might develop in areas like the fields around St Ouen’s Pond, lapwings may happily feed alone in much smaller areas. The 2-300 lapwings on the Island on Thursday had been joined by possibly over a thousand more by Friday. Several small flocks of golden plovers came in with the lapwings – these two birds often join together in winter.
The other abundant and obvious visitors are the thrushes. There were already plenty of wintering redwings on the Island but on Friday morning they were joined by many thousands more that had arrived across the parishes in fields and gardens alike. New blackbirds and song thrushes had arrived too and were obvious as they tried to feed on the roadside at first light. Fieldfares, a bird formerly more common in the Jersey winter when winters were much colder than now, had also come in but only in smaller numbers so far. Interestingly, there are many less waterbird arrivals like ducks and grebes suggesting that so far it is only snow on the fields moving the wanderers and not the kind of cold temperatures that freeze ducks out of their ponds.
Today we reached a significant milestone when the 2,000th data sheet was input into the Farmland Bird Monitoring database. The first sheet, from Crabbé, was filled out on 1st April 2005 when we made 45 records involving 100 birds of 15 species. The 2,000th sheet, from Les Creux on 19th January, detailed 144 records of 729 birds from 25 species – an event greatly helped by the arrival of heavy snow. At the beginning of this long-term survey there were only five sites being monitored but that has now increased to 18 transects at 16 sites covering farmland, parkland, woodland, heath and unimproved grassland. To date 160 bird species have been recorded including six escapes (three living wild), two feral and two introduced species. The species total includes two identifiable subspecies of white wagtail (most records go under just the one catchall race!) and two yellow wagtails. We have so far input over 80,000 records detailing 200,000 birds!
The data collected in this survey is not suitable to estimate the size of our bird populations at any of the individual sites or for an overall Island figure. This form of consistent data collection does, however, provide a fantastic tool for seeing how our birds are faring both within a year and from year to year.
Each fortnight, 21km of transects are walked once whatever the weather. To date, 24 observers have contributed records with a core of around 10 real diehards who laugh off the horizontal rain and the attention of the many dogs we seem to meet on each transect. The real benefit to a scheme like this will only begin to be seen several years after the start as long term trends in our bird populations become apparent. While some transects have now been counted for nearly eight years others have come in to the project much more recently. The database will allow us to look at population trends at single sites or at combinations of sites. Obviously the biggest benefit will come from the biggest size of dataset and at the moment that is the set that comprises of the five original sites (Les Landes, Crabbé, Les Creux, Les Blanche Banques and Noirmont). In the future we will be able to run off graphs like that here for linnet from a combined dataset of maybe 16 sites. The greatest value of this project is in highlighting the status of our Island’s birds, of the environment in which they live and in planning for the future.
So, with this project…..
What are the most recorded species? Blackbird, robin, wren and great tit seem to be seen most regularly but possibly chaffinch is the most recorded overall;
What is the rarest? Luckily for the recorders several of the rarest birds recorded in Jersey have turned up on a transect during a count including solitary and buff-breasted sandpipers. Fan-tailed warbler and firecrest were first found nesting on a transect and the returning cirl buntings were found on one too;
And favourites? Each of the counters has their own favourites but the occurrence of bearded tits in St Ouen’s Bay and the possibility in season of migratory yellow wagtails, wryneck and ring ouzel are always highlights. However, little can beat finding a bittern or a long-eared owl stood on a transect staring at the observer!
And the least favourite? Well, surely there are none but some can be a bit tricky at times to pick out as they skulk or when their songs resemble others -dunnocks and garden warblers stand out here (or are too high-pitched for ageing recorders like me);
And the saddest? The loss of yellowhammer and steady declines in stonechat and skylark numbers are perhaps most poignant;
And the next species? Well, there are some obvious candidates but surely it will be red-billed chough!
The Farmland Bird Monitoring project has been further enlarged to include two new woodland sites. The new sites, at Rozel Manor and La Poudretterie (du Scez) near La Saie in St Martin increase the number of woodlands monitored to five with St Catherine’s Woods, Fern Valley and St Peter’s Valley. They also increase the overall project to 18 transects at 16 sites, each to be visited once every two weeks throughout the year. The two new transects are 843 and 1,543 metres long respectively.
The two new sites are both privately owned and monitoring is done with the kind permission of the owners. Birds recorded will be entered into the project database but will also be used for woodland management trials aimed for 2014 as part of a joint project by the Department of the Environment and Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Early visits to the two new sites have found that all the expected birds are present including great spotted woodpecker, goldcrest, short-toed treecreeper and common buzzard. The real excitement, however, might be more in seeing which species are there during the breeding season.
BIRDS ON THE EDGE has highlighted the threats to our finches and other songbirds from diseases such as the parasitic trichomonosis and avian pox being spread among the birds. The larger population consequences of these parasitic diseases, however, are rarely documented. A recent study in the journal Ibis has looked at the extent to which the trichomonosis epidemic affected the Finnish population sizes of European greenfinch, chaffinch and a control species, great tit, and the body condition of greenfinches.
The disease was first documented in Finland in 2008 and epidemics were observed mainly in south-western Finland. Greenfinches showed a significant decline of 47% in breeding numbers and 65% in wintering numbers in southern Finland during 2006 – 2010. Breeding chaffinch numbers showed a slight decline (4%) during the same study period that was significant only in central Finland. Great tit did not show a significant change in breeding numbers. During the initial disease epidemic the body condition of all demographic groups of greenfinches decreased equally, suggesting that the disease was not selective in respect of age or sex. There were no encounters of Finnish ringed greenfinches or chaffinches in the UK, which could indicate that the parasite has not necessarily been transferred directly from the UK, but perhaps by migrants from Sweden and Germany.
