There is plenty of interest to read in this month’s British Birds. For example, Adrian Pitches’s always-excellent News and Comment section talks about Werritty, the first successful breeding of Spoon-billed Sandpipers at Slimbridge, our own wild-hacking story, the impacts of a heatwave on Guillemots in the Pacific and much more.
But as you can see from the cover there is much more. The paper on population estimates of birds is a very useful reference until the next one is produced in a few years’ time. It has been pointed out to me, that the print version (but not the online version) has an error in one of my favourite species, the Pheasant. The population given is 840,000 breeding females but should be 2,350,000 females (this, of course, is the spring breeding population, so doesn’t reflect release numbers, whereas the 47,000,000 released Pheasants of late summer certainly bump up the breeding population). I’m guessing that there are other errors in here too – it would be amazing if there weren’t and proof-reading words is difficult enough, proof-reading numbers, lots and lots of numbers, would be a task that would require amazing attention to details. I’d go almost so far as to say that anyone who could possibly do this with a smile on their face would be more than a little strange…
Having a decent idea of how numerous a species is, and whether it is getting more or less numerous, are very cornerstones of informed conservation effort. We are blessed, though not lucky, to have such good figures for birds. But there really was no luck involved – it is down to a lot of work fron volunteers, wildlife NGOs (particularly RSPB and BTO) and the statutory agencies. Of course, the results of all this work need to inform conservation action…
And then a great update on lead ammunition too, by two honorary professors (Debbie Pain and Rhys Green), a former Head of BASC (John Swift) and Ruth Cromie from WWT. The days when we allow the shooting industry to provide food to the public with high levels of a poison in it are surely very numbered – they must be as I’ve seen claims that the shooting industry is leading this change!
How many Water Rails breed in the UK? I guessed before looking up the answer here and I underestimated, but my four-figure estimate of the number of pairs started with the ‘right’ figure.
Which is BB’s Book of the Year? And there are touching obituaries of Peter Davis and Mike Peacock.
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