Catastrophising Summer–The Birds
By Paul Homewood
It’s the Telegraph’s turn to catastrophise summer!
h/t Ian Magness
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2023/07/04/britains-new-species-night-heron/
As Ian points out, night herons have been a common sight for years in Britain.
For instance, Coward’s 1926 bird book has this listing:
Then there’s Witherby 1945:
Adam Hart is yet another of the young breed of journalists who would rather just write stuff because it fits their worldview, rather than actually do a bit of research.
This is clearly shown when he repeats the tired old lie that puffins are dying out because of climate change. A bit of research would have told him that puffins are actually thriving off the Pembrokeshire coast, and are only in decline elsewhere because of industrial sand eel fishing in the North Sea.
I wonder what Christopher Booker would have made of this latest puerile rubbish!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Shouldn’t your headline read: ‘_For_ the Birds’?
It’s also known since long, that birds and insects (like butterflies) sometimes fly in the wrong direction. They get lost as well as humans. Nothing new and it will happen again.
Thirty years ago there were night herons at Edinburgh Zoo that used to head off into East Lothian for the night on a regular basis.
Given that they had that freedom they could hardly have been exactly desperate to get back to Africa for the winter!
I’m not disputing the argument that drought in southern Spain might send them further north this year but, since swallows make the journey twice a year and have done since forever, to leap on this as a further proof of global warming is either fundamentally dishonest or fundamentally ignorant.
Christianity has things to say about “invincible ignorance” (how was I to know?) and “culpable ignorance” (I couldn’t be bothered to find out!). Same applies!😏
He should be more concerned about the amount of birds that are chewed up by wind turbines.
so the “expert” doesn’t know how many sightings there have been and doesn’t know if its a record, but knows its climate change. Even though if he’s right about wetlands, it’s just because wetlands in France and Spain are a bit dry this year.
Just utter garbage from beginning to end.
Confirmation bias is rife in climate alarm-land.
And the biggest problem is that there is no global warming or climate change of any significant deviation more than in the past history.
Herons gravitate to ponds looking for fish – they dont restock a pond near me since the herons clean it out even when covered with nets .
The change in bird population from year to year around my home is due (in my opinion) to three factors:
1 A cold spell in winter and spring kills off some vulnerable species of bird.
2 This year a sparrow hawk has been patrolling the valley taking lots of small birds.
3 There are lots of badgers and foxes about which take ground (or low level) nesting birds and their eggs or their chicks.
Absolutely nothing to do with “global warming” (or “global heating” or “climate change” or whatever the latest phrase is).
Grey squirrels but worse magpies in the breeding season they will systematically hunt hedgerows and gardens in search of eggs and nestlings to feed their young.
Where I am in the last 40 years the populations of both Grey Squirrels and Magpies have increased hugely.
Also people are pleased to see webcam footage of Peregrine Falcon and other raptors nesting on cathedral and church spires or on high rise office blocks while at the same time lamenting the decline in garden song bird populations.
You are right. I try to eliminate grey squirrels every year, but new ones always take over. And we have had a pair of magpies breeding nearby this year.
And there are now far more domestic cats…
Not where I live.
“And the biggest problem is that there is no global warming or climate change of any significant deviation more than in the past history.”
There aren’t enough climate change incidents, so they have to invent them!
I think the clue is in the original article – overshoot migrants because their usual wetlands in France and Spain have shrunk. The irritation is the automatic assumption that it must be because of climate change with no evince whatsoever to support that. More likely it is Spanish and French farmers draining the swamp.
It’s a massively common bird and there is absolutely no reason why the UK would not be in its normal migratory breeding range.
My guess would be that hundreds of years ago it did breed in the UK, but we got rid of a lot of our marshes/wetlands, it was persecuted for fish pond theft, and hunted for food. As it is now protected and wetlands are being recreated, it would be natural for it to return.
Apparently the chicks spew their stomach contents when alarmed, I hope they don’t read the papers or watch the BBC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-crowned_night_heron
According to Collins Guide its range in western Europe is southern France and Spain though there appears to be a breeding colony in the Netherlands for some reason which would imply that a least the occasional visit to the UK would not be uncommon.
On the unrelated subject of cats, our garden is part of the territory of at least four cats that appear regularly which has not prevented thriving colonies of sparrows, collared doves, blue, great and long-tailed tits, chaffinches, and goldfinches along with regular appearances by redstarts, blackcaps, a resident robin, the occasional wren, wagtails, jays and the occasional opportunist sparrowhawk.
The major noticeable effect of a neighbour finally being persuaded to rid himself of feral cats has been an increase in the number of rats, not birds!
There are considerably more reasons than the local cat population for the decline in song birds, not least that increasingly we have made our gardens unwelcoming.
Do you know that I have never seen a ‘night heron’. Maybe the clue as to why is in the name?
Those Catastrophising weather which they wilfully conflate with climate assume a linear trajectory of outcome even though in the incoherent gibberish they spout they suggest flux/ change.
Warming -> climatic regions expand-> more precipitation-> increased area for habitation including of course human habitation.
Cooling – > Shrinking of climatic regions -> reduced precipitation -> reduced area for habitation
So with the NATURALLY expanding climatic regions will come the fauna and flora. It has all happened before. What do these fools think occurred during the Minoan Warm, the Roman Warm and the Medieval Warm? It is time deliberate and wilful spreading of partial and misleading information to the public was seen for what it is, a criminal act.
However, stand back and put Klymutt into context with all of the other miserable left wing (marxist) supported causes which have one goal only which is to create chaos. Marxism cannot thrive in a free and vibrant society/economy. The virus needs chaos, stress, conflict and confusion. They are responsible for creating the environment based on which they will then offer themselves up to save us all from. History tells again and again it is them and their their murderous ideology we need to protect ourselves from.
My 1898 copy of R.Bowdler Sharpe’s Sketck Book of British Birds has a paragraph about Night Herons, they were relatively common having been shot in England, Scotland and Ireland, that was the usual way of identifying birds in the 19th century!
would that work for identifying MPs?
Sounds worth a try, roger.
Recently, the EU allowed the Danes to take more sand eels for animal food. Decades ago, when going to the Smithfield Show in Earls Court, the walkway was lined with posters for “Seameel” – animal food made from sand eels! Hence puffins decline in the North Sea and flourish in the Severn Estuary.
The Danes used to use sand eels for fuel for electricity generation in power stations – much as the Irish used peat. Times have changed, except for the good old Danes!!!
Any true ornithologist will know that migrating birds can be blown off course by storms. ‘Overshoot migrants’ are not uncommon, and occur among all migratory species.
‘wetland habitats have shrunk due to drought so they carried on flying north’
Gross speculation.
But not unreasonable. The “unreasonableness” is when you leap on this situation and immediately label it “climate change”. It may be climate change; it may simply be a dry Spring in the south of Spain driving the birds, this year, to seek breeding grounds elsewhere.
For what it’s worth our swallows were late back this year. My records show they were late back in 2015 as well. So?
Thank you Paul, for having the evidence to hand to demonstrate the foolish and/or ignorant deceptions practised by the Telegraph (and others).
I remember an old saw “two swallows does not a summer make”
Obviously forgotten these days
Night Heron – Nycticorax nycticorax
Threat status Europe Least Concern (IUCN)
EU Population status Secure
So what exactly is Telegraph’s/Hart’s/Phelps’ (a real ornithologist) concern?
My RSPB Handbook of British Birds 2006 has a page devoted to the night heron and says “a small number, usually less than 20, arrive in Britain or Ireland in most years”
Back in the 90s I did a week as an RSPB volunteer – don’t worry, I cancelled my membership later over global warming – in Weymouth and they were talking about a night heron sighting.
For the people that missed the detail in my wiki link: STATUS IN GREAT BRITAIN
There are two archaeological specimens of the black-crowned night heron in Great Britain. The oldest is from the Roman London Wall and the more recent from the Royal Navy’s late medieval victualling yards in Greenwich. It appears in the London poulterers’ price lists as the Brewe, a bird which was thought to have been the Eurasian whimbrel or glossy ibis, which has now been shown to refer to the black-crowned night heron, derived from the medieval French Bihoreau. Black-crowned night heron may have bred in the far wetter and wider landscape of pre-modern Britain. They were certainly imported for the table so the bone specimens themselves do not prove they were part of the British avifauna. In modern times the black-crowned night heron is a vagrant and feral breeding colonies were established at Edinburgh Zoo from 1950 into the 21st century and at Great Witchingham in Norfolk, where there were 8 pairs in 2003 but breeding was not repeated in 2004 or 2005. A pair of adults were seen with two recently fledged juveniles in Somerset in 2017, which is the first proven breeding record of wild black-crowned night herons in Great Britain.
There seems to be an assumption by the media and warmists that the time we now live in (or maybe 150 years ago) is somehow the optimum climate that we should aim to retain, but that’s just “our” narrow view whereas what’s to say that when Hippos wallowed in the Thames that wasn’t the optimum climate, as it probably was for them. It’s just a need to make scary news stories. I’m an RSPB member (still!) and I’m expecting their scare story on this in their next journal.