New report reveals declines in UK’s woodland birds
- New data show long-term declines of woodland bird species
- Some specialist woodland species have declined dramatically, including willow tit, which has shown the second biggest decline of any widespread UK bird.
- Numbers of native birds overall are down, with 19 million fewer pairs of breeding birds in the UK compared to the late 1960s.
The distribution and numbers of birds in the UK are changing dramatically, with many species experiencing worrying declines according to a new report.
The State of the UK’s Birds 2020 (SUKB) – the one-stop shop for all the latest results from bird surveys and monitoring studies – this year highlights the continuing poor fortunes of the UK’s woodland birds.
The woodland bird indicator shows a long-term decline of 27% since the early 1970s, with declines of 7% evident over just the last five years. More worryingly some specialist woodland birds have declined dramatically, including willows tits, which have shown the second biggest decline of any UK bird. The breeding populations of five other species (lesser spotted woodpecker, lesser redpoll, spotted flycatcher, capercaillie and marsh tit), are now less than a quarter of what they were 50 years ago. Changes in the way our woodlands are managed are thought to be the main cause.
The UK’s endemic subspecies of willow tit is the fastest declining widespread resident species in the UK, its population having dropped by 94% since 1970 and by 33% between 2008 and 2018. The RSPB, Natural England and others have conducted research into the causes of its decline and new woodland management practices are now being trialled in an attempt to halt the decline. Due to its declining numbers, annual monitoring of this species is becoming increasingly difficult, something that prompted a targeted UK-wide survey in 2019/20 to estimate numbers.
The report also highlights new figures estimating that there are 83 million pairs of native breeding birds in the UK. Comparison with previously published figures, indicates that there are now 19 million fewer pairs of native breeding birds in the UK compared to the late 1960s. Because the numbers of some species have increased, Wren being one example, the scale of the numbers actually lost is much bigger, at some 43 million pairs overall. House sparrows have been hit the hardest and there are now 10.7 million fewer pairs than in 1966.The wren population has grown by 6.5 million pairs and is the most numerous bird in the UK.
The report does contain better news for some species. In Wales, house sparrows increased by 92% from 1995 to 2018. Across the whole of the UK, house sparrow is still the third most common breeding bird, but the millions of pairs that have disappeared since monitoring started in the late 60s puts these increases in context.
Climate change is predicted to impact UK bird populations and, for example, is behind the increases in numbers of Cetti’s warblers. However, for several large waterbirds, including great white egrets, cattle egrets, little egrets, little bitterns and spoonbills, better protection of both the birds themselves and the wetland habitats they require also appear to be contributing to the increase.
Populations of some of the UK’s rarer breeding bird species have also seen increases, some due to concerted conservation action, such as cirl buntings, stone-curlews and corncrakes. These recoveries are great examples of conservation success and a reason for optimism, nevertheless some of the species remain dependent on ongoing conservation support.
Fiona Burns, lead author of the State of the UK’s Birds 2020 said: “The UK’s birds are telling us that nature is in retreat. The continuing losses seen across many species are not sustainable and more needs to be done to stop the declines and help populations revive and recover. These findings are in line with our earlier State of Nature 2019 report which found that 41% of all UK species are declining. More action is needed if we are to tackle the nature crisis.”
David Noble, Head & Principal Ecologist, BTO said: “Volunteers play an essential role in bird monitoring in the UK, by donating their time, energy and expertise. The data they collect are vital for conservation, tracking changes and policy development. This year, many monitoring schemes have been adversely affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic and we want to say a special thank you to all of those involved for their continued support through this difficult time.”
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The bitter irony is that solutions for woodland birds are far more readily achievable than almost any other area of conservation concern – but seems of little or no interest to conservation bodies, most of whose forestry policies relate to upland plantations and are stuck in the 1990s.
Why is it ? I think it’s because woodland is too common and too complex – because there’s a lot of it things aren’t rare the way Avocets – with a habitat which is always going to be limited – are. And there is no simple rule book route to woodland management – there is matrix on the one hand of the largest range of vegetation types and on the other a wide range of management options at both micro and macro scale. Even the most expert woodland managers debate the options long and hard – but the conservation world is lagging way behind in management skills – if only they knew it, a lot of current commentary on forestry and woodland comes pretty close to ‘the beavers will eat all the fish’. It was hugely disappointing that the Forestry Panel after the forest sales fiasco, which gave top conservation leaders the chance to learn and think about the issues seriously, seems to have slipped away like water off a ducks back.
But the birds are telling us what is going on. 500,000 hectares – half England’s woodlands – are neglected. Management was abandoned for most in the same time period – from 1945 onwards – meaning that trees are generally growing up thickly, narrow canopies and stems, and completely shading out shrub and ground layers. What the report doesn’t say is that the birds you’d expect to benefit from older woodland are doing well – Great Spotted Woodpecker and Nuthatch are key examples, with Nuthatch moving north fast. In direct contrast Nightingale should be moving north too, but is in sharp retreat – neglected woodland shades out its habitat and if that doesn’t do the job deer browsing will finish it.
Another example – most Spotted Flycatcher I’ve seen seem to like the layer below a canopy of broad spreading trees – like the Oak at Nagshead in the Dean which has been well thinned over 2 centuries. Understandably, the tightly packed stems and narrow crowns of neglected woodland just don’t suit them. An ideal would be extensive woodland with significant open space and many different management approaches, including woodland developing naturally, stands of big timber and dense scrub layers. Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in the New Forest is an example of it working – but there’s a way to go before we know exactly what makes LSW tick.
The physical resource is there to reverse the decline of woodland birds but it will take a lot of very hard work and there is not the convenient human enemy beloved of conservation campaigning to villify.
Nightingales – another species it will be interesting to see interacting with beavers. As yet is there anywhere in the country where the two species co-exist to give us an idea? Maybe when beavers have been around for a few years nightingales might move into the coppiced riparian zone they’ve created. With the exception of the robin I’m not sure of any bird species that would directly benefit from having the wild boar back, but its rooting stimulates a more diverse ground flora and that should be a benefit. Then there’s the missing keystone species almost never mentioned the auroch. An animal that could stand more than six feet tall at the shoulder must have acted a bit like a bulldozer crossed with a heavy duty lawnmower – open patches galore I would think. Killing a few trees and the resulting deadwood would’ve helped too. Would the limited presence of older breeds of domestic cattle work today?
So many important species missing we can’t just turn our backs and leave things alone until if and when we get the lost fauna back. If larger scale restoration and return of the missing fauna doesn’t help we are in serious trouble because the list of species needing intensive care grows by the day. A sobering thought that if Homo sapiens was responsible for their demise, without us our woodlands would have Merck’s rhinoceros and straight tusked elephant too.
Both Knepp and Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands have introduced cattle to stand in for aurochs, with striking results. In Oostvaardersplassen the cattle and horses appear to have created a largely tree-less landscape (https://theoldmanofwytham.com/2019/03/28/oostvaardersplassen-revisited/) though it seems as though this is largely due to the fact that the animals are confined there even when conditions are bad when in the absence of fences they might have been expected to move to more favourable areas.
There seems little doubt that large herbivores can play a huge role in maintaining habitat diversity and thereby promoting biodiversity but in the absence of their predators some level of control is necessary. A future ideal in which extensive areas of Britain have free-ranging populations of a full suite of herbivores as well as wolves, lynx, and bears and thriving eagle and other raptor populations is something we can aspire to but I fear we are still rather a long way from being able to achieve that (given the struggle to get even beavers accepted). In the meantime we will be obliged to play god to a greater or lesser extent to achieve the effects you describe.
I’m not surprised as far as our woods are concerned many are little more than glorified parks they’re not woodland ecosystems. The ground flora is either eaten out by deer or shaded out by non native invasives like cherry laurel. The number of times I see cherry laurel in the background when a video or TV program happens to be set in a wood is shocking, this is a far bigger issue than is being widely acknowledged. If you’re lucky dead wood is still there, it’s just been put out of sight so as not to offend the sensibilities of the public. As far as leaving dead trees in place no chance – just too conspicuous which will go a long way to explain why willow tit and lesser spotted woodpecker are in a bad way. Someone should do a study about the correlation between public consultation exercises on local woodlands and biodiversity decline – we’re considerably better at public consultation than we are at public education now. If you say you hate dead wood that’ll be noted, but no one will tell you it’s vital for wildlife and ask if our ‘aesthetics’ should morally take precedence over having healthy ecosystems. Would doing the latter be considered too close to contradicting the wishes of ‘the people’?
I find it very hard to believe that this is entirely down to woodland management. We know there has been a major decline in invertebrates and there is a lot of evidence that pesticides are involved in this. We should be looking very hard at the impacts of the persistent and accumulative pesticides (like neonicotinoids) on the invertebrate food that many of these species rely upon.
I agree to an extent.
Where we found Willow Tits as kids has not changed a deal to my eyes, in no way could it be called damp ground, and there is more scrub in places nowadays.
A very perceptive – and given your name appropriate – comment. Woodland is the one extensive habitat in the UK where insecticide use is almost non-existent. However, just how far do the effects of surrounding use penetrate the forest ? It was very worrying when the moth count at the European monitoring site in Alice Holt Forest crashed – in a wood of maybe 200 hectares/ 500 acres. It may take the very big forests to be immune to those external influences.
Woodland ‘management’ should also include completely stepping back in many cases, instead of constantly feeling the need to manipulate complex ecosystems to achieve specific ‘outcomes’. It’s extremely frustrating to constantly see the the mid 20th century cited as some cornucopia for UK wildlife, when we’d already extirpated numerous keystone species from ourlandscapes. The truth is, our areas of ‘wilderness’ were still extremely simplified and modified back then and we should be far more ambitious going forward. If the best we can do is highly modified, agricultural landscapes, which attract huge subsidies from the taxpayer, who will get absolutely no say in the direction that those areas take (hint: landed interests, shooting estates and farming lobbies will), then it’s a pitiful state of affairs and says a lot for the state of UK ecology.