Guardian Only Tell Half The Story
By Paul Homewood
The magical winter wildlife spectacle of hundreds of thousands of wading birds converging on British estuaries could be under threat as research shows big declines in some of the most familiar species.
Results from the Wetland Bird Survey reveals that ringed plovers, oystercatchers, redshank and dunlin are among the eight most abundant species overwintering on UK estuaries to suffer significant and consistent population drops over 10 years.
Conservationists believe several factors are responsible, including climate change forcing the birds to areas outside the UK….
Research by Wetland International has shown winter populations of some of the species have recently shifted away from the UK to Dutch and German coasts, possibly in response to milder winters.
DOH!!!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly
UK winters have actually been getting COLDER in the last ten years.
Notice how, on the above graph, populations for three of the four were higher in 2001, (after a decade of mild winters) than they had been in 1975, (after a decade of cold winters).
Notably, Chas Holt of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), who coordinated the survey, said:
“These birds are breeding in the Arctic then wintering much further south in a flyway that runs right from north-west Europe down into Africa. So are they wintering over a large area?”
Quite probably, this would be their reaction to colder winters here.
Meanwhile, the actual survey referred to shows the population of many species has increased over both 25 and 10-year timescales.
http://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u18/downloads/publications/wituk-2012-13.pdf
The study states that “69% of waterbirds in Table 1 have declined since 2001”. But what they don’t say is that 25 out of the 46, i.e. 54% have increased since 1986.
There could, of course, be many factors involved, as Chas Holt says. But, if UK climate is involved at all, all the evidence points population numbers increasing during mild winters, and declining in colder ones.
For some reason, the Guardian seems reluctant to mention this.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
With all the floods we had earlier this year, I’d have thought ‘climate change’ was a boon for waders.
Reblogged this on Cornwall Wind Watch and commented:
never let the facts get in the way of a good alarmist story
Surely the problem is partially down to much stricter protection for raptors, not to mention re-introduction and breeding programmes.
I can’t think of a vegetarian raptor, in fact I think some of them are quite partial to duck. A bird has to eat at least once or twice a day to survive.
The continuing recovery of many birds of prey is a conservation and cultural success story: a matter for celebration rather than concern. Birds such as the peregrine, buzzard and red kite, absent for so many years, are once again familiar to people living across the UK.
Click to access wingprayer_tcm9-188788.pdf
red kites imho are scavengers and it is not a good thing that their numbers are increasing imho
Just out of interest, I studied lapwing decline in my local area and concluded that this was mostly due to changes in farming practices. Ground nesting birds such as lapwing and golden plover are very susceptible to agricultural trends.
There has been a notable shift away from hay production and towards silage production in my region (south-east Co Antrim) since the early-1980s. Arable grassland is cut much earlier in the season in many places than it was in the 1950s, 60s and even 70s. This early cut coincides with a vital period in lapwing nesting. The small birds and nests are destroyed before they have a chance to mature.
In a hay-making environment, the crop isn’t harvested until July. This gives the chicks time to mature enough to out-fly or outrun the blades.
A dyed in the wool warmist (which I’m not, honestly) might argue that silage production has prevailed because, thanks to extensions in the growing season, the farmers are now assured of three silage cuts from the same patch of ground instead of the previous two. Pound for pound hay is a more valuable product than silage, but if you can beat hay 3/1 in volume with silage then silage earns you slightly more money. Free market forces are killing the lapwings!
But against that, lapwings are a species that only ever thrived in the UK environment because our forebears turned largely forested land into pasture in the first place! It’s all very complicated.
The birds have been decimated by the windmills !
O/T but Booker on fine form today:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2713830/Lunacy-sea-As-Ministers-agree-world-s-biggest-wind-farm-Brighton-Britain-succumbed-catastrophic-folly.html