Mark writes: a great image of a Bittern at Minsmere – they will be booming there today, no doubt.
Oscar has sent me the details (camera, lens etc) for his images but at the moment I can’t read them – rather oddly. When we accomplish this piece of communication then I’ll add them.
I haven’t seen a Bittern yet this year – it hasn’t been a year for them in the Nene Valley. But every time I do see a Bittern I remember that they got as low as 11 booming males in 1997 but now has passed 100 males. So each one looks pretty good to me.
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Here’s one what moves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAGnXEAJN6o
Saw something the other day where about 40 people in Somerset levels in Ham Wall and surrounding area went out early morning counting booming males and think they counted something like 43,seems like that is now the highest density in the country.
Dennis -yes, isn’t that just amazing!
It is amazing but also testament to the huge amount of effort, and not a little cash, to re-establish suitable habitat for these charismatic birds. Not re-introduction but just the correct encouragement and birds will return and flourish. Now for Hen Harriers?
Yes Mark I find it really nice and is a great advertisement for the rspb and shows that with the right management and lots of hard work what can be achieved,when we go to Ham Wall we always see some flying and just even perhaps 10 years ago we never thought we would be lucky enough to see one,well done to everyone involved.On a not so good note thumbs down to the rspb senior person on TV who was against dredging because it was not in Kingfishers interests,well serious flooding like we have had there cannot be good for lots of wildlife especially Barn Owls perhaps who must have suffered worse from the flooding than Kingfishers would from dredging and anyway management of various things have to carry on sometimes with side effects.Lets face it some rspb management has negative side effects.
This person just really meant they were against anything that rspb did not like.
Really I thought it was a case of them saying we like farmers but we want to put the boot in all the time.
If the rspb is so worried about that problem with Kingfishers there is surely a simple answer from their expert scientists.