I find that I carry British Birds around with me for ages before I get around to reading it and so this blog is about the September issue which contains the report of the Rare Breeding Bird Panel.
The contrasting fortunes of three warblers struck me as I read through the text; Cetti’s, Savi’s and marsh.
I have heard a few Savi’s warblers in the UK, but not that many. This is a species which went extinct in the UK and then recolonised as a breeding species in 1960. But it doesn’t seem very keen on living here as the number of pairs hovers around the four pairs mark and the breeding record in the report for 2009 was the first since 2000.
In contrast, I hear Cetti’s warblers on most of my visits to my local gravel pits at Stanwick Lakes. Sometimes it seems to me that the number of singing males on my normal 2-hour walk gets into double figures. And that’s hardly surprising as there are now well over 2000 pairs of Cetti’s warblers in the UK – spread through England and Wales. And yet the Cetti’s is a parvenu – the first breeding record was only in the year 1970. So Savi’s warbler got a decade start on Cetti’s warbler and yet is three orders of magnitude rarer as a breeding species despite its head start. Who would have thought it?
And the third warbler in this list, the marsh warbler, is just clinging on to its UK breeding status with fewer than 10 pairs on average in the UK. This has always been an uncommon species, and yet, at the time when Savi and Cetti were sending their warblers over here the marsh warbler numbered around 200 pairs or so.
All three of these warblers are doing fine in Europe as a whole but their very different UK fortunes interest me, if only because they are all southern species which occupy fairly similar habitats. We still have a lot to learn about birds – but they are fantastic!
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