They should know better! Author's rap for birders who disturbed colony of nesting Little Terns on Yorkshire Coast

 

Fascinating insights - Richard Boon's delightful new book

A SOMEWHAT surprising (and dismaying)  statistic is detailed in Richard Boon's absorbing account of a summer spent as a shorebird warden near Spurn on the Yorkshire Coast.

It was birdwatchers and photographers who proved to be among the highest number of those causing disturbance to a colony of a small but important colony of shingle-nesting Little Terns.

The number was 17 - way below the 49 recorded for dog disruption - but significantly higher than that, for instance, of off-road vehicles or horse riding (both five).

Boon confesses that he finds it not easy to forgive "birders and photographers who get too close and are seemingly oblivious to the alarm calls of the birds they have flushed". 

He says: "They should know better."

At this point, it needs to be stressed that Clinging to The Edge is not a preachy or self-righteous book.

It is a crisply-written and often amusing account of the numerous challenges that the author and his fellow wardens had to overcome to safeguard these tiny, enchanting and incredibly vulnerable seabirds.

Diligence, stamina and ingenuity were the watchwords. 

Methods explored for keeping at bay  predators - raptors, mammals and reptiles - included the use of lions' dung, sonic alarms, fake predator eyes, air horns and tying rags to long bamboo canes, then waving them furiously at any approaching kestrel or sparrowhawk.

In the final analysis, however, it was the electric fence that proved most effective, albeit that it was time-consuming and complicated to maintain.

At just 134 pages, this is not a long book but it is packed with fascinating information both about the breeding behaviour of the terns and also about the daily trials and tribulations (and rewards) of being a shorebird warden.

Subtitled A Year in The Life of a Little Tern Colony, this entertaining (and amply-illustrated) paperback is published by Pelagic  (www.pelagicpublishing.com) at £25. 

An 'intimate relationship' - Jeff Ollerton's book explores the longstanding interaction between birds and flowers

 

HUMMINGBIRDS, and the balletic ways in which they feed on flowers, are familiar to most nature enthusiasts.

But they belong to just one of at least 74 bird families that are known, or suspected, to be pollinators.

Relationships between plants and birds first emerged at least 50 million years ago and over time have influenced the evolution of both groups.

This groundbreaking book by Sunderland ecology scientist and all-round naturalist Jeff Ollerton is the first to deal with pollinating birds in all their diversity, involving almost 1,390 avian species interacting with tens of thousands of different plants. 

It  explores these interactions in all their evolutionary and ecological significance. 

Pollinating birds have intricate lives that are often highly dependent on flowers, and the plants themselves are at the whim of birds for their reproduction. 

This makes them important players within many ecosystems, including tropical rainforests, dry grasslands, temperate woodlands, coastal mangroves and oceanic islands.

Bird–flower relationships are threatened by disease, habitat destruction and climate change. 

Some of the birds are already extinct. 

Yet there are optimistic stories to be told about conservation and restoration projects that reveal the commitment of people to preserving these vital ecological connections. 

In addition, as a source of cultural inspiration with a history stretching back millennia, pollinating birds and their flowers are part of the ongoing relationship between humanity and the rest of nature.

Birds & Flowers is published by Pelagic Publishing (  https://pelagicpublishing.com/ ) at £19.99.

That's it, then! Tragically, the Slender-billed Curlew has gone the same way as the Great Auk - and that's official

 Gone forever! This is  a painting of the bird from John Gould's Birds of Europe (1837) 

IT looks like the birding world has now, sadly,  given up on the Slender-billed Curlew.

The last example of this migratory species was recorded in a photograph taken at Merja Zerga in Morocco in 1995.

Since then, despite extensive and intensive searches - particularly in its traditional bogland breeding habitat in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan - there have been no incontrovertible sightings.

The RSPB, the British Ornithologists' Union and the rest of the global birding community has therefore, with reluctance, decided to declare the bird globally extinct.

Since the 1500s, other British and European species have suffered the same fate - notably the Great Auk on an island off Iceland  in 1844.

Another European 'gonna' has been the Canary Islands Oystercatcher which was declared extinct in 1994, not having been since the 1940s.

But these two were largely island species, while the Slender-billed Curlew used to be found across the European mainland.

Historically, there have  been a handful of reported 'sightings' in Britain, though contemporary experts have discounted them as unreliable. The bird no longer features on the British List.

What have  been the reasons for the species spiral into extinction?

Pressures are likely to have included extensive drainage of boglands for agricultural use, the loss of coastal wetland habitat where it used to spend winter and, even when it was known to be endangered, hunting.

Pollution, disease, predation, and climate change may have also been factors.

Says the RSPB's Nicola Crockford: "This is one of the most fundamentally devastating stories to come out of nature conservation in a century.

"It gets to the very heart of why the RSPB and our partners  are doing what we do; that is, ultimately, to prevent extinction of species. 

"This is the first known global extinction of a bird from mainland Europe, North Africa and West Asia.

"This has happened in our lifetimes. 

"How can we expect countries beyond Europe to step up for their species when our comparatively wealthy countries have failed?"

A slightly larger cousin of the bird is the Eurasian Curlew which, at this time of year, is often to be seen  feeding on the mudflats and in the saltmarshes of Cleethorpes and Grimsby, sometimes venturing on to school playing fields later in winter.

But this species, too, is in serious decline. 

If we are not careful, it, could also be lost.

RSPB insists cost-cutting at its reserves will enable it to "remain strong and viable" in troubled times

                                                                   

Welcome to Loch Garten - but will the welcome be so warm after the New Year cutbacks?

          

In the wake of recent reports in The Wryneck, the RSPB has now confirmed that cuts are to be made at its network of 220-plus nature reserves, among them those at Abernethy/ Loch Garten (of Osprey fame) and Rainham Marshes - a favourite with Londoners (and actress Alison  Steadman). Neither will close but they are to lose their shops/ cafes early in the New Year. As it seeks to reduce costs, the society has identified five other target sites where facilities will be reduced or which might be offloaded altogether. The RSPB's statement is below. 

Like any responsible charity, we are always trying to make sure that the money that we receive from our generous members and supporters is spent in the best possible way to help nature.

The economy has not been in the best of shape in recent years. 

Every one of us is feeling the cost-of-living crisis and inflationary pressure, and many people are having to make difficult decisions in their day-to-day lives to make ends meet.

This situation also impacts the RSPB, and indeed many in our sector, in several ways, including increasing cost pressures as suppliers put up prices and rising energy costs across our large estate. 

Our income is growing but not fast enough to keep up with rising costs. 

To give a sense of this, it took £150 million to deliver our work two years ago. 

Today that same work will cost us £165 million, a 10 per cent cost rise.

And so, to ensure our longer-term sustainability, we have completed a comprehensive review of our operations. 

We have looked across the organisation for improvements and efficiencies - from how we do our work to where we buy the things we need to do it.

As our incredible nature reserves and what we deliver for nature on them make up the largest proportion of our financial spend each year, we have also been looking at our reserve network and other small pieces of land that we own or manage to make sure that what we are doing in these places makes sense both in terms of protecting and restoring nature and financially in the longer term. 

Because nature needs us to be at our very best not only for now but way into the future.

Our staff who work on these sites and our incredible volunteers who do so much are the beating heart of what we do. 

But to remain strong and viable we need to make some changes.

To be clear, it does not mean selling off large areas of land to the highest bidder and it does not mean that any of our flagship reserves will disappear.

This work has meant really focusing in on what each site’s unique contribution to our strategy and mission should be. 

At some of our nature reserves, a very small number of facilities are planned for closure or potential change of management. This includes five retail facilities, one cafe, and four visitor centres across a total of seven sites:

Loch Garten Nature Reserve, Abernethy, Scotland - retail facility

RSPB Newport Wetlands, Newport, Wales - retail facility

RSPB Dungeness, Kent, England - retail facility

Flatford Wildlife Garden, Suffolk, England - reviewing options for the future of the reserve during 2025, including potential change of management

RSPB Rye Meads, Hertfordshire, England - reviewing options for the future of the reserve during 2025, including potential change of management

RSPB Fairhaven Lake Visitor Centre, Lancashire, England - retail facility and visitor centre

Rainham Marshes in Essex, England  retail facility and cafe. The future management of the visitor centre will be explored over the next 12 months. The nature reserve will remain open.

At others, we are reducing our work in order to do more elsewhere.

At these sites, totalling less than 1 per cent of our landholding, this will mean working in partnership with other charities, community groups or local councils to find sustainable futures for these places. 

In the coming years, some will focus primarily on maintenance, and others on developing their incredible conservation outcomes.

Our long-term aim is to focus on what we do best and where we can do this most effectively, and we’re continuing to grow the area of land that we manage and conserve for nature year on year.

Strategic acquisitions, particularly to our existing reserves, are critically important to us, so we can provide nature with bigger, more joined-up places to call home. 

Since 2017, we have acquired over 8,500 hectares of new land to restore, from whole new reserves like Sherwood Forest and Glencripesdale in Scotland, through to strategic extensions such as at Blacktoft Sands in Yorkshire and Lakenheath in Suffolk.

The science tells us that nature does better in these larger more ecologically joined-up places and we have a number of exciting and large new acquisitions in the pipeline to be announced in the coming months.

We are also changing the schools visiting scheme on our reserves. 

Our education work has achieved some incredible things over many decades, bringing millions of children closer to nature, helping bring about change within the education system, and providing much-loved resources for teachers.

Young people are incredibly important to us. 

This is why we offer free entry to nature reserves for those aged 16-24 and our Youth Council recently collaborated on the 2024 Youth in Nature Summit, designed to inspire, empower and unite young people and leaders from across the environmental sector.

We have always regularly reviewed and refined our work to ensure it has the most impact, and our latest review of our educational programmes has concluded that our charitable and strategic aims are best delivered through an updated approach.

We will focus our education work on those areas where we can have the greatest impact and where we have a unique role to play. 

We are developing a new approach to education that we believe, over time, will reach even more children and allow them to connect with nature in a much deeper way. 

We will be able to share more details about what this means for the way we continue to welcome schools onto our reserves in 2025.

In the meantime, we remain committed to supporting schools and teachers through activities such as Schools Wild Challenge and Big Schools’ Birdwatch, and through our current digital resources for teachers on our website. 

We are also increasing our work with schools through our new ‘Environment Leaders’ qualification and the development of a teacher CPD programme (Continuing Professional Development) that will build the skills and confidence of many more teachers to support learning in, through, about, and for nature, working in partnership with others.

Change is always challenging. 

Since the RSPB began 135 years ago, we have been working to help create a world where wildlife and people can thrive. 

Today, thanks to the generosity of our members, supporters, partners, funders and volunteers, the RSPB is the UK’s leading charity for nature conservation. 

For this to continue for years to come, we will be even more focused on where this generous support can have the biggest impact - boosting numbers of birds and other wildlife, restoring the vital habitats they need, creating better nature havens for members to visit and bringing more people together who love birds and wildlife and who want to take action to restore the natural world.

We are committed to keeping our members informed about these changes, and we will next update them in the RSPB Magazine in December.

The Wryneck says: It is good that the RSPB has come clean about its intentions albeit with a statement that is mealy-mouthed, patronising and  self-congratulatory. But the fact is that this initiative will be extremely damaging.  Not only do the reserves provide a home for birds and other wildlife, but they showcase the RSPB to members and prospective members alike. To downgrade them can only have a negative effect, not least on the reputation of the society itself. There are 101 other ways in which it can save money, starting with the sale of its HQ in Sandy which is largely empty now that so many of its executive and administrative staff work from home. The society should also take a hard look at its ballooning management costs - especially in areas such as media management and diversity where its work is often not only misguided but also ineffective.

Two paintings by Lincolnshire artist George Lodge set bidders aflutter at weekend auction in Yorkshire

                                           

Star bird - bidding was brisk for this study of a Hobby

TWO original paintings by acclaimed Lincolnshire artist George Lodge (1860-1954) sold for more than expected at a weekend auction in Yorkshire.

First up was his study of a Snipe which fetched £450 compared with a pre-sale estimate of between £250 and £400.

The sale's next lot - his depiction of  a Hobby did even better.

The work had originally been catalogued as a Peregrine until it was amended by auction house Tennants following re-identification by a reporter for The Wryneck.

As with the Snipe, Leyburn-based Tennants had set a pre-sale guide price of between £250 and £400, but it proved to be an underestimate at Saturday morning's auction.

Bidding soared, and it was not until it had reached £1,300 that the hammer fell.

As is customary, the identity of the buyer(s) of the two paintings remains confidential.

                                              

Snipe - the painting sold for above the pre-sale estimate

RSPB set to close cafes and scrap school visits across its 220-plus reserves - starting with Rainham Marshes

                                                           

A view across Rainham Marshes. The site will remain open to the public but the shop and cafe will close  (photo: Romfordian via Wikimedia Commons)

COST-SAVING cuts are to be made at a nature hotspot popular with Londoners.

The RSPB intends to close both the cafe and the shop at its Rainham Marshes reserve in the New Year.

The site - a former Ministry of Defence firing range on the banks of the River Thames - will remain open to the public, but the society also plans to end its programme of school visits and education sessions.

The bird charity has a network of more than 220 nature reserves all of which have been subject to what it calls a "re-categorisation" exercise.

Many other reserves face similar cuts with  the jobs of some wardens and their assistants thought to be at risk. 

In the short term,  the shops at both Dungeness in Kent and Fairhaven Lake in Lancashire have also been slated for closure. 

If takers can be found, at least two reserves -  Rye Meads in Hertfordshire and Flatford Wildlife Gardens in Essex - are likely to be disposed of.

The society, which posted a record £170-million income in 2023-24, says: "The global and domestic financial pressures of the past two years have had an ongoing impact on our finances.

"As a charity, it is essential that we generate income to fund our work. 

"We cannot afford to subsidise loss-making facilities at the expense of our important charitable and strategic aims.

"Change of course is always challenging. 

"Since the RSPB began 135 years ago, we have been working to help create a world where wildlife and people can thrive. 

"As a responsible and prudent charity, we monitor the external environment closely, and, for the RSPB to continue to tackle the nature and climate emergency, we need to be able to adapt and evolve to the ever-changing external environment around us."

The RSPB wants to get shot of its reserve at Rye Meads in Hertfordshire (photo: RSPB)

                                                 

The RSPB will soon close its shop at Fairhaven Lake on the Ribble Estuary in Lancashire (photo: RSPB)

Not the full set - but rare opportunity beckons to bid for 122 volumes in New Naturalist series

 

BIDDING could be lively when 122 volumes from the Collins New Naturalist series go under the hammer later this month.

Yorkshire-based auction house Tennants estimates the hammer will fall at somewhere between £300 and £500.

It is not a complete run, and there are some duplicates.

Some prospective bidders might also be put off by price-clipped jackets on at least 14, with ink ownership inscriptions or ex-libris labels in others.

However, between them, they carry a wealth of wildlife knowledge, particularly on matters ornithological.

Online bidding is now open for Lot 83 in advance of the sale which will be held at the auction rooms at Leyburn in North Yorkshire at 10.30am on November 27.