I’m giving a couple of talks before the end of the month, and until the end of the year. Phew – it’s been a busy and exciting year.
I’ve met lots of kindred spirits, been asked some good questions, been treated to some pretty good birding and fine conversations between Falmouth and Perth, and between Bangor, North Wales and Essex.
My last two talks this year are as follows:
Saturday 26 November – Dorset Bird Club
Tuesday 29 November – Bedfordshire Bird Club
Maybe I’ll see you at one or other of them?
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Talking of talks, we attended the Bernard Tucker Memorial Lecture (http://www.oos.org.uk/tucker.php) ‘Birds and Climate Change’ in Oxford last night, given by James Pearce-Higgins, BTO Science Director.
Interestingly James started the talk looking closely at red grouse as a sub-species of willow grouse and the pressures of climate change on its distribution. One of these pressures was that increased drying of surface peat was leading to the loss of insects, especially crane fly larvae, which are a major food source for the young chicks, therefore reducing the birds’ breeding success.
As well as changing weather patterns, James also mentioned that the UK is unique in intensively managing red grouse/willow grouse by all the methods well-known to readers of this blog. It occurred to us that over use of muirburn was inadvertently making life more difficult for grouse chicks (and other species such as golden plover) by removing an important food source. Maybe if grouse moor owners paid more attention to the overall health of the environment, they could have more grouse with less interference.
This was just part of a wide-ranging talk that covered local resident species such as wrens and herons, to long-distance migrants like willow warblers and cuckoos, and will be published in due course in ‘British Birds’, which helped sponsor the lecture.
Richard and Lyn Ebbs