Bee-eaters in Norfolk ‘worrying sign of climate change’

By Paul Homewood

 

h/t Joe Public

 

 

 

Rare "rainbow birds" trying to breed in the UK was a "worrying sign of how our climate is changing", the RSPB said.

The charity said bee-eaters had been making nest burrows in a small quarry at Trimingham, near Cromer, Norfolk.

The exotic birds are usually found in southern Europe and northern Africa.

Mark Thomas from the RSPB said: "While an incredible sight, we mustn’t forget that the arrival of these birds to our shores is due to changes to our climate and subsequent pressures on wildlife.

"Pushed northwards by climate change, these exotic birds will likely become established summer visitors in the future, having been an early and unmissable sign in the past two decades that the nature and climate emergency has reached our shores."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-61837499

Despite the BBC employing numerous ‘Environmental Analysts’, ‘Climate Fact Checkers’, and ‘Reality Teams’ at Licence-payers expense, no mention is made of earlier visits to England by bee-eaters which demolish the RSPB’s false claim "worrying sign of how our climate is changing" quoted uncritically by the BBC.

Rare Bird Alert reports:
"Bee-eaters breed on the Isle of Wight
A pair of colourful and rare Bee-eater that have set up home on National Trust land on the Isle of Wight have become only the third record of this European bird to breed successfully in the UK in the last century.
Bee-eater, which would normally be found nesting in southern Europe, were last recorded breeding in the UK in 2002, when a pair nested in a quarry in County Durham and two young successfully fledged. Before that, two pairs were recorded raising seven young in a Sussex sand-pit in 1955."
(National Trust July 2014)
http://www.rarebirdalert.co.uk/v2/Content/Bee-eater_breed_on_the_Isle_of_Wight.aspx?s_id=715602576

WikiP further informs:
"In 1955, three pairs of bee-eaters nested in Streat Sand Quarry near Plumpton, East Sussex. The birds were first found on 12 June, although the birds’ presence only became widely known at the start of August. ….. seven young fledged from the two remaining nests towards the end of August. An RSPB wardening operation was instigated …"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee-eaters_in_Britain

Joe Public has filed a complaint with the BBC.

FOOTNOTE

Ian Magness has also been researching this, and has sent me copies from a couple of ancient bird handbooks, which relate how visits to Britain by bee-eaters have been recorded many times since the 19thC:

The Birds of The British Isles & Their Eggs – T A Coward, 1926

The Handbook of British Birds – HF Witherby, 1945