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Curlew Music

3/30/2018

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​I am standing by a telescope on Upham Meadow and the Summer Leasow, 257 acres of wet grassland by the River Avon near its confluence with the Severn. This is said to be the largest hay meadow in Britain. With me are two energetic campaigners for Eurasian curlews, which are in headlong decline in the UK, and throughout their global range; BBC producer Mary Colwell, (check out her website http://www.curlewcall.org/​), and Mike Smart of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. 

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The grass is not yet long enough to conceal birdlife; a scan of this vast flatland reveals fourteen curlews alongside several crows and lesser black-backed gulls. We are here to record their evocative songs and calls, to discuss ways of classifying what they mean, and how this can help with their conservation. 
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Upham Meadow  is too prone to flooding to have ever been improved; instead it hosts one of the main concentrations of breeding curlews in lowland Britain. Mike tells me that the meadow is still managed according to an ancient regime. It is divided into many strips owned by various local farmers; hay can be cut from June 15th, and must be cut by 4th August, Lammas day (an old harvest festival, named after the Anglo-saxon for loaf). Commoners from the local village can then graze livestock until the first winter flood - leasow is a verb meaning to graze or pasture.  Traditionally the staggered timings of the hay cut on different strips maintained a perfect mosaic of long and short grass for young curlews and their invertebrate food; Natural England has negotiated an agreement with the farmers to perpetuate this. Public access is restricted in the breeding season.

Curlews are long lived, and each pair needs to produce 0.5 chicks a year to maintain the population. Sadly even in this island of apparently perfect habitat all is not well; the local group of about 30 pairs fledged only three young last year, and even in good years they are well behind the required rate.  Foxes, badgers, crows and gulls have all increased rapidly, and will be on the look out for eggs and chicks when the time comes. Another change is that the M5 now crosses the meadow on an embankment and I soon realize that in the prevailing strong south-westerly my recording equipment will be completely redundant due to traffic noise. 

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The curlews are lounging around not appearing to do much.  Occasionally a couple will rise up, their bubbling faintly audible above the roar of the motorway, and fly around the meadow, then settle and chase each other around with wings raised, before offering each other pieces of grass in a curious ritual which no-one has quite made sense of. There is still a lot to learn about curlews, and the race is on to understand them so that conservation measures can be put in place before it is too late. My job is to classify their vocalisations for use both in public engagement and specialized data collection. 
PictureCurlew on her nest at Stiperstones in Shropshire
Of all British birdsongs the curlew has a particular emotional appeal, evoking melancholy and ecstacy at the same time. Click here to listen to the high intensity song of a male. Why is it so memorable? Like most human music, and some other birdsongs, the curlew takes advantage of natural harmonics to create satisfying and far carrying vocalisations. Using its syrinx as we use a brass instrument, the curlew runs up the harmonic series to communicate excitement or alarm. The female will choose a male for the quality of the highest harmonic in his song; high harmonics are also used to show the threat of danger. Birds open and close their beaks and use their tongues to create smaller variations of pitch, in the same way as a trombonist uses his slide; any curlew vocalization slowed down to a quarter speed can easily be reproduced on a trombone. Click here to listen to the same song slowed down.
 
In addition to their song, curlews have a repertoire of calls, from the cheeping of unhatched chicks (curiously reminiscent of willow warbler song) to a variety of communications between adults, and between adults and chicks. I know a gamekeeper in Yorkshire who reckons he can tell at a mile's distance whether a curlew has seen a fox or a stoat. At least thirteen different vocalisation types have been identified; there are probably more, but I'll have to find somewhere quieter to record them.

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For an opportunity to learn more about curlews, and to observe and listen to them safely at close quarters, come to the Bolton Castle Curlew Festival in June.
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City Birds

3/18/2018

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​I have a couple of free hours between a meeting in St James's Square and another in South Kensington; London being what it is I can walk almost the entire journey of over two miles through green spaces; despite an icy wind I hear a dunnock singing as I emerge into Green Park. Wood pigeons graze and a pair of magpies, which have every reason to be shy birds in the countryside, allow me to approach and enjoy the wonderful cobalt sheen to their feathers. I hear a mistle thrush singing in the distance and walk over; he too allows me close enough to photograph (below).
 

​I cross into Hyde Park and spot ring-necked parakeets on some feeders; several people are photographing them with mobile phones. I was just in East Anglia where, for all the successful outreach by conservation bodies, midweek birdwatchers are inevitably mostly Anglo-Saxon and retired; here people of all ages and ethnicities stop to take a look, and maybe a selfie, as part of their daily routine. The birds would have looked equally unusual at Minsmere; ring-necked parakeets are natives of Africa and Asia, with a separate subspecies in each. They have long been popular as pets due to their colourful plumage, acrobatic skills and ability to mimic the human voice. The Ancient Greeks kept the Indian subspecies, and the Ancient Romans the African one. The Indian subspecies is declining fast in the wild, but is naturalised in many cities around the world, including London where they first bred in 1969. They are spreading fast around England and Wales.

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In countries such as Israel, they are major pests for fruit growers, and there is also concern that they may out-compete native species in competition for food and nest holes. A cousin, the monk parakeet was recently exterminated in London as a public health hazard. However the ring-necks seem to be here to stay, and an easily viewed group such as this in the corner of Hyde Park will surely help to connect otherwise hard to reach groups with wildlife. Some native species have actually benefitted-in the last few years hobbies, agile falcons which normally feed on swallows, swifts and dragonflies, have bred in Hyde Park for the first time, feasting almost exclusively on these conspicuous colonists. Peregrines and tawny owls have also been tucking in, and as I leave the feeders the squarks of the parakeets go up in pitch and they break for cover as a female sparrowhawk flies over.


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I move over to the Serpentine, where a similarly wide range of people is feeding a wide range of birds. Feral greylags, Canada geese and hybrids are joined by another colourful newcomer with a history; Egyptian geese, more closely related to shelducks than geese, are natives of sub-Saharan Africa and the Nile valley. Considered sacred by the Ancient Egyptians, they are commonly found in Egyptian art. They were introduced to England in the 17th Century, but their habit of breeding in January meant that until the 1990s they struggled to spread and were mostly restricted to Norfolk. Mild winters in the last 20 years have allowed a population explosion. Here they lap up the abundant bread on offer in a feeding frenzy with mute swans, feral pigeons, starlings, mallards, black-headed gulls (below), moorhens, coots, tufted ducks, even a pair of gadwall. Herons fly to and from their nests on the island; offshore three coots get into in a fight (above), while further out, a pair of great crested grebes, almost extinct in Britain in the 19th century, perform their spectacular display. The grebes stay too far out for i-pad photography, but anyone can capture the rest of this cosmopolitan cast at point-blank range. ​​

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Unspoiled?

3/11/2018

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Medieval Suffolk was wealthy, well populated, commercialised and urbanised. Dunwich was a major international port. A mile or two away, Minsmere (now a flagship RSPB reserve) was a broad tidal estuary with a small port of its own. Boats must have been everywhere. Dunwich gradually declined from the 14th century and eroded into the sea; from the early 17th century a sand spit gradually blocked the mouth of Minsmere estuary, creating a huge tidal lagoon - a haven for smugglers. The spit closed up in 1780, and briefly creating a freshwater marsh, which may have looked like it does now (above). In the 1810s it was drained and the land was reclaimed for grazing. Soon afterwards local landowners, the Ogilvies, planted up the surrounding sandlings (treeless heaths used for rabbit warrens and grazing sheep), for hunting and shooting.
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​The grazing marshes remained until 1940, when Minsmere beach (above) was identified as an easy landing area for German invaders. Concrete blocks were lined up along the spit to keep out tanks (right), mines were laid, and barbed wire was stretched along the beach. The hamlet by the main sluice gate was evacuated and used by the RAF for target practice; grazing marshes were flooded.​

After the war the Ministry of Agriculture started to reclaim the land. As flood levels dropped in 1947, four pairs of avocets (elegant wading birds which had been exterminated in the UK in the mid-19th century by hunting, drainage, and egg collecting) nested. The Ogilvies realized that protecting avocets could help maintain duck shooting enhanced by the floods. Together with the RSPB they lobbied the Ministry of Agriculture, suspended the drainage, and the RSPB started to lease the site in 1947, the Ogilvies retaining shooting rights. However through natural succession the flooded marsh quickly became overgrown with reeds (below), attracting other colonists including bitterns, bearded tits, and marsh harriers, but driving out the avocets.​
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To counteract this the Minsmere Scrape (below) was created in 1962, a pioneering piece of artificial habitat creation by warden Bert Axell, a great conservationist and character (read this) but not a big fan of visitors ('they're wasting my bloody time'). When I first visited on a family holiday in 1974, my father had to write off to RSPB headquarters for a permit for us to be shown round on a specific day. Health and safety had yet to appear and I fell down a hole in one of the hides and broke a toe. This was a blessing in disguise, as I got a personalized wheelchair ride round the reserve; since then I have followed the reserve's development.​

The RSPB bought Minsmere in 1977, building it up to its present 2500 acres. The Scrape was enthusiastically admired and imitated by conservationists as far away as Japan, but many local people regarded Minsmere as somewhere where they were not welcome, and it was feared that increased visitor numbers would effect rare breeding species. Eventually public consultations were held about how to make the reserve attractive to locals. From 2014-16 Springwatch was filmed at Minsmere for three years, causing a massive spike in visitor numbers and public profile. On recent evenings flocks of people, not all regular birdwatchers, have convened to see murmurations of up to 40,000 starlings. Interestingly numbers of rare breeding species have risen incrementally with the number of visitors, which is now around 120,000 per year; I wonder what Bert Axell would have thought.​

Minsmere is part of Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Natural beauty, marketed as 'unspoiled'; its swaying reeds can conjure up an impression of remote timelessness. In fact it has frequently been 'spoiled' by both man and nature; scratch the surface and you realize that this remarkably bio-diverse landscape is in a constant state of flux. ​​​Due to rising sea levels it could to revert to a tidal estuary within this century; in the short run increased water abstraction for cooling at the new Sizewell C nuclear power station next door may alter the delicate balance between fresh and saline water.
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                                           Recent colonists: nuclear power station and little egret
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Birds in Time

3/4/2018

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​I've been coming to Elshieshields near Lochmaben in South-West Scotland for the past fifteen years. During this time there have been obvious changes to birdlife in its 20 acres of mixed woodland on the banks of the river Ae. 15 years ago nuthatches were just establishing themselves in Scotland; now they are common here, encouraged by global warming and more bird feeding (left), without which cold weather such as this might have killed them in the past. On the debit side, ten years ago the fields around here resounded with the bubbling of curlews in spring; last year I heard only one, briefly. Their breeding habitat has been drained, and the few corners left are easily found and worked over by predators. Lapwings are going the same way.

​How about the more distant past? I look up Lochmaben in the Scottish Statistical Accounts; in 1845 the local minister Thomas Marjoribanks lists birds in his parish. Many are still here, sometimes under different names: white owl (our barn owl), water-ouzel (our dipper-'most destructive to the salmon fry'), golden-crested wren (goldcrest), willow or silver-wren (willow warbler and chiffchaff, lumped together as one species), white and yellow (pied and grey) wagtails. Three species Marjoribanks specifically ascribes to Elshieshields, 'missel-thrush', 'long-tailed titmouse' and jay, are still on site. Like me Marjoribanks enjoyed locating local rarities- I too have found quail, but not butcher-bird (red-backed shrike). Finches are lumped together as 'various species of linnet'; life was hard without binoculars.

The landscape was different then; in 1845 stone-chats were 'in great abundance on the Lochmaben Moors', and both black-cock and red grouse bred within a mile of town; goat-suckers (nightjars) were frequently seen. These moorland birds are long gone along with the moors. The parish church used to be thatched with dried heather; now hardly any heather grows in the parish. Marshland birds have also decreased; snipe are still here in winter but no longer 'particularly common'; water-rail was 'abundant about the outlets from the lakes', now they are rare. 
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To fill the gap between Marjoribanks's time and mine I visit the Gladstones at Capernoch. Robert's grandfather Hugh was a bird obsessive, who kept lists of everything he saw and wrote a number of books, including the encyclopedic Birds of Dumfriesshire (1910). He also collected what is said to be the largest private collection of British bird books (right), kept intact by his grandson. I browse and learn that bitterns were common round Lochmaben in the 18th century; they are mentioned by Robert Burns, but must have become extinct by Marjoribanks' time, as he doesn’t mention them. Interestingly a few have been seen recently -perhaps they will recolonize. Our local speciality the willow tit was not identified as a British species until 1897, and a Scottish one until the 1910s; Marjoribanks would have called them marsh tits, a bird now thought never to have occurred in Dumfriesshire. I find a reference to curlews around Lochmaben in the 1790s, saying they were nesting in every field until recent agricultural improvements. Gladstone says that the alarm calls of the 'whaups' alerted persecuted 17th century Covenanters to the approach of troops.

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The evocative calls of large flocks of whooper swans (right) and pink-footed geese (below) are a characteristic part of Lochmaben's winter landscape. It is tempting to think this is a shared acoustic experience that has been going on for centuries. I am surprised to learn from Gladstone that in 1845 most wild swans here were Bewick's rather than whoopers, and most wild geese were bean geese rather than pinkfeet. Bewick's swans are now rarely seen in South West Scotland, and bean geese are a rare species in the UK, but these must have been the 'wild swans and goose' Marjoribanks knew, with subtly different calls filling the air.
 
What birds will be here in 2100?

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    Welcome to my blog, where I write about stories and experience that have something to do with birds. I'm also posting regularly on instagram @cowdrey.peter

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