or on tumblr at http://www.tumblr.com/blog/ralph-orangejam
This week has seen the publication of the latest State of the UK’s Birds report by a whole bunch of UK conservation organisations.
The media coverage (here, here, here) highlighted the fact that 44 million birds have disappeared from our lives since 1966.
But this loss passed by without much of a murmur, let alone a murmuration.
There is no comment on this matter to be found on the Defra website, instead we are regaled by tales of the Secretary of State’s trip to China and reminded of Defra’s enthusiasm to kill badgers.
Having abolished the public service agreement with The Treasury which linked Defra funding to the fate of farmland birds this government feels it doesn’t have to comment on the parlous state of wildlife in the UK. The steady and continuing decline of wildlife around us is not seen as worthy of comment by the department that has responsibility for stemming that loss. Let us hope that when Owen Paterson speaks at a Wildlife and Countryside Link event next week then he finds something to say on the subject. Maybe ‘Sorry we’ve done so badly’ would be a good place to start. I’ll let you know.
Before they were neutered and muzzled we might have hoped that Natural England, might have mentioned this report on their website – but I find no mention of it, despite their logo being on the front of the report. In the joint press release issued by the group of organisations who issued the report NE are quoted as praising the volunteers who collected the data but are silent on the importance of the findings or the consequences of these declines.
Having said that, we hear nothing from CCW, SNH or NIEA either.
Should we regard this as a conspiracy of silence or just a complete lack of interest from government and the statutory sector? It’s difficult to tell. A murmuration it isn’t.
[registration_form]
You have rightly pointed the finger at Defra, NE, etc. but, based on the reported loss of 44 million birds, how successful do you think the RSPB has been in ‘protecting’ birds over the last 40 years?
It would seem that we have become very good at monitoring bird populations but, except in a very few cases, we have simply been recording huge declines. The report suggests that in spite of all the research nothing like enough is being done to reverse the downward slide of a great many species.
Surely something has to change or we will continue to get the same result and Ralph Underhill’s cartoon will come true.
PeterD – conservationists as a whole have been more successful at conserving the rare species than the common ones (read my book!).
As far as the RSPB is concerned then it is worth pointing out that the RSPB’s membership was 10,000 as recently as 1960 and only reached 100,000 in 1972. The 500,000 came as recently as 1989. So 40 years ago the RSPB was less than a tenth of its current size.
In that time conservationists have turned around the fortunes of quite a few bird species: marsh harrier, red kite, osprey, bittern, corncrake, cirl bunting, stone curlew etc. Each of these recoveries took a lot of research, effort and a fair deal of money.
Where we have all been less successful, and where (I guess, as I haven’t seen the detailed workings of this) most of those 44 million birds come from, are the widespread species of farmland birds, woodland birds and even the house sparrows in our cities.
As far as farmland birds are concerned you can’t really blame the RSPB too much for the fact that governments haven’t taken their advice to heart. We could stick millions of lost birds back into the countryside, at no extra cost, if only Defra would tweak the failing agri-environment schemes so that they actually worked! having said that, things would actually be far far worse (imagine that!) if the RSPB hadn’t been influencing government over that period.
There is a lot more to do.
I still feel there was a massive failure in the response to the 2010 biodiversity targets – a failure which is carrying over into how seriously 2020 targets are taken: the stark contrast between what we had set out to conserve and the fate of birds in the wider countryside.
The birds we set out to protect have generally done pretty well to incredibly well – for Mark the Bittern story, me Nightjars which were on a trajectory towards extinction (Bittern pretty well were). When there was nice crisp target – 95% of SSSis in favourable condition – conservation action really worked – and Government funded it.
RSPB’s entry into agricultural policy in 1996 was both brave and ground breaking and Mark is absolutely right, though its hard to believe, that things would be far, far worse if they hadn’t.
However, where is the imagination and leadership now things are going so badly wrong with a Government that has no real vision for the future and a terrifying lack of regard for the natural environment ? As Ralph’s cartoon reminds us there has been one issue that has caught this Government’s attention, twice now, and that is the fate of our trees and forests but the conservation lobby has preferred to stick to its own chosen path rather than hook up with the issue that is catching the headlines, and probably largely due to prejudices hanging over from 20 years ago amongst many of today’s conservation leaders.
First thing we need to acknowledge that however much farmers can help and think Martin Harper or someone commented that about 96% of them thought that if pillar 2 cuts came in it would affect their environment friendly farming(words to that effect)then it means the large majority are interested in improving things.
However much anyone puts part of the blame on these missing 44 million birds on farming I cannot see how approximately 25% which is the House Sparrow decline can be levelled at farming as probably the big population of them were townies.
While I agree with all Marks observations on this the one thing I think his passionate conservation mood misses is that unfortunately there is a massive majority in the population as a whole who do not give a hoot about these missing 44 million birds and much worse would never spend money on reversing this decline.
Lets hope his passion and continuing pushing for the relatively common birds has some affect.
Mark,
I have to ask about your first comment, and the work conservationist have done to bring back certain species from the brink of extinction and how some of the more “common” birds (the true rarities) have carried on declining. How much of the fact that common species are still on the decline is because a) they’re not viewed as glamorous by “average Joe”, after all from what I understand the RSPB came about because some women were sick and tired of seeing other women wearing feathers in church and one of the first species to get their attention was the “ordinary” Great Crested Grebe, yet the RSPB (for genuine reasons) chose the more appealing Avocet as their logo b) Some of the species (osprey,curlew etc ) don’t have to spend their whole time here in this country and migrate, therefore don’t have to cope through the winter with no suitable habitat/food etc.
Oh what a shame too that I was helping a friend yesterday evacuate a “Cattery” business behind the Billing Aquadrome only to get home and find that Owen Patterson was approximately 800 metres away..push/shove/splosh 🙂
Douglas – I’m not sure that people don’t care about the common species. After all, they are the ones that people know about best. The decline of the house sparrow is a good example – lots of people have noticed it happening and they care about it. Hardly anyone comes across a bittern in their normal lives. The solutions for common species are more difficult to implement because they need to be rolled out everywhere for them to work and often involve changes to government policy. The right words in our agriculture policy would put millions of birds back in the countryside – but getting those right words is very difficult.
As far as migrants are concerned – there is a growing number of migrant species which are declining (and it’s truye right across europe). this might mean that things are going wrong for them on migration or their wintering grounds – or it might just mean that summer migrants are almost all insectivores and insects have got much rarer in Europe’s countryside.
I’m not convinced about the House Sparrow though Mark, around my estate and neighbouring estates it’s definately a very,very common bird I would even argue (without counting them) that they have increased in the last two summers, I will accept that nationally they have declined, is it a factor that the estates I’ve walked around were House Sparrow are very common the housing is 90% local authority therefore cash strapped councils aren’t so quick to replace tiles and other gaps in brick work, the other houses near me are terraced Victorian houses and Sparrows are everywhere, it seems to me modern house and the estates aren’t bird friendly (look at Upton Mill), I recently saw a new build house that was built with great huge eaves and this spring they had Housemartins nesting there, to the joy of the home owner who had that in mind. But also people (I believe and would love to be proved wrong) wouldn’t come around my way and count Sparrows, I don’t agree with Dennis saying the House Sparrow is a townie, I can take you to a house in “rural” Clipston that has approximately 30-35 House Sparrows on the home owners “grounds”, funnily he told me they declined when he stopped feeding his chickens in a certain manner (loose feed scattered on the ground) but when he reverted back again they slowly increased in numbers. I also have to disagree Mark in regards to common species appealing to more people, yes they are more appealing to a particular type of person, lets do an experiment to prove my point, next time you go and do a speak/talk and the crowd are serious “birders”, try and engage them in a conversation about a Robin,Chaffinch,Tits and Dunnocks then do the same about something more exotic like a Bittern or Great White Egret, I bet the longest conversation or the one you get an more enthusiatic response will be about “exotic” birds or raptors. Cast your mind back to what/how you described to ol’ Linnet (yeah I know it was tongue in cheek).
My mum loves the birds that visit her feeders and falls into the category you describe, but she wouldn’t be able to tell if a Greenfinch or Great Tit has avian pox, is the same true across the nation? Yet if no-one watches these birds visiting these gardens how can you monitor and treat/prevent such a disease from effecting these birds and get an accurate view of what certain species are doing in their garden, for example even though my neighbours (and mum) feed passerines etc in the winter, that’s about all they do, they don’t take part for example in the RSPB gardenwatch survey nor do my neighbours etc watch programmes such as Springwatch.
Douglas, interesting about chickens and sparrows. I have found where people kept chickens the sparrows never died out. You can find people with chickens now and no sparrows as keeping chickens has come back into fashion but the sparrows are apparently slow at recolonising. The rot set in badly with the salmonella scare and Edwina Curry.
Though of course we can still blame defra as In an article “Backyard chickens pose threat to poultry farmers” The Royal Veterinary College survey of backyard poultry keeping found among a raft of other failings there was a failure to follow defra instructions on biosecurity by not limiting the access of wild birds to the chickens. (so we shouldnot be letting the sparrows have their preferred feed). I don’t know how free range chicken farms do it but there you go. http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/16/11/2012/136266/Backyard-chickens-pose-threat-to-poultry-farmers.htm
The Sparrow decline is quite interesting, as they are doing well and even a pest in places where they are introduced. So what is the difference? Are the local people as obsessed with feeding birds peanuts like we are? Well as its a wet afternoon. I looked around a bit on the internet. The Americans are into feeding birds but I think they use other grain feeds. I think their sparrows have finer bills and don’t like the hard peanuts. They do seem a bit obsessed however with stopping gangs of thuggish introduced European House sparrows hogging their feeders and chasing some very pretty birds away.
So what’s with peanuts. There is one suggestion that their human allergenic properties are linked to a compound they contain and which is homologous to and acts as a trypsin inhibitor. Now raw Soya has a serious problem as an animal feed and needs treatment to remove a trypsin inhibitor before it can be fed to chickens. I am not suggesting the peanuts kill the birds just that they do not do well if their diet contains a lot of peanuts. Where there are chickens they prefer to feed off the ground round the chickens and don’t get so much peanut in their diet. (don’t ask me why sparrows should be the only bird that is susceptible) Thus any experiments with supplementary feed that use mixed grains will work and will be just like the scattered chicken food!
Well there is a wet Saturday kite to fly, anyone any better ideas why the sparrows are declining here?
Andrew – thank you for a great comment.
We think we know, at one level, why urban sparrows are declining. It’s because there aren’t enough insects in the middle of cities. Kate Vincent carried out a PhD study of urban house sparrows in Leicester http://www.katevincent.org/ . RSPB has done quite big experiements in London which show that a combination of winter food (seeds) and summer food (mealworms) will keep your sparrows doing well.
But have insect populations really declined in cities/ And if so – why?
Mark,
Thanks for the link. That is a nice piece of work.
I think the comments about sparrows survival where there were chickens was correct.
In rural areas I assume we have enough insects in summer but the old farm grain store with a broken window and tailings heap from cleaning the grain have gone along with the rough edges with plantains and weeds growing. So I guess winter feed is short. Hence my comments about the relationship with chickens. As farms dwindled in number and tidied up, in the days before regular bird feeding was so common this was the only regular reliable source of food in the winter (and summer). I live in a location that cannot be more rural next to marsh grassland so there surely are enough insects. There were sparrows here 20years ago when we moved in. Before we started feeding birds in a regular way the neighbor who kept chickens moved away and the sparrows have gone. There are still sparrows a mile or so away in two directions round beef cattle yards. (This is an arable area so cattle yards are unusual).
Round here a (not very scientific) survey with school children a few years ago found urban House sparrows closely linked to (mainly) privet hedges.
Be interesting to repeat the survey 10+ years on after many have been ripped out to provide front driveways and rear ones gone as fences are easier to maintain.
Not a single sparrow in the garden this year – most of our neighbours have removed their trees and shrubs so we are now an green island in a sea of low maintenance gardens.
They did breed in our street in the eaves of the corner house but they always flew the ‘wrong’ way 🙁
In response to Andrew comments, I’ve never really been keen on peanuts, I can’t convince myself they’re safe, and your comment kind of proves. The bloke I refer to in my comment and his chickens all he did was put the seeds in these metal food bin type of devices and the chucks just intimidated the Sparrows. He only did it as he got a rat problem, but found they would eat from a feeding table but not a feeder once the rats left he went back.
I can’t comment nationally but I don’t think insects in heavily built up areas have declined, I think they’ve got more plentiful. I’ve never had to supplement my Sparrows during the summer and maize seeds during the winter. I have a pair at the front and rear of the house (under loose house tiles), one neighbour in the loathed/maligned Leylandi (spelt right?) tree, and my local newsagents has these hexagonal tiles have way up the wall, and one tile fell down, in moved a Sparrow, but WE DO have a lot of gardens in our area with privet hedges.
As for the decline I thought I read/watched that air pollution was an issue? Maybe another often forgotten about cause is CATS! I know they prey on any ground feeding birds in my garden….BAN THE CAT 🙂
Co-indidentally an article in today’s Scotland on Sunday: http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/birds-of-a-feather-the-murmurations-of-thousands-of-starlings-over-gretna-are-a-wonder-unless-you-live-under-their-flight-path-1-2658235
🙂 Yep, I remember when we lived in East Grinstead, we used to occasionally go and meet my dad from work in London, we used to travle from Bank of America to Picadily Circus, all of sudden (on a dry night) by old man would open up his umbrella and instruct us to get under it, perplexed we didn’t argue, but this was the mid 80’s and the Starling flock was massive, we dipped into a Pizza chain for dinner sat by the window and just watched the other pedestrians getting splattered in poop. I even remember the attitudes of the days from back then, I was amazed, but others thought them as vermin and did anything possible to get rid of them, and I mean anything. TRAPS,POISON,PEOPLE WERE STOPPED WHEN THEY TURNED UP WITH GUNS, ETC
The report says that 27 million pairs were lost mid 70s-80s, and since then numbers have stabilised, even bounced up 5 million pairs. I’d guess that agricultural intensification, and habitat destruction accounts for this decline of 21% of the bird population as a whole. Have things really stabilised since the mid 80s? If so, then maybe conservation efforts are working?
Tim – yes things have been bumping along the bottom for quite a while even though we know how to get them to increase and are pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into agri-environment schemes. Actually, it might not be the bottom – it could get even worse but we shouldn’t be satisfied with the current situation.