Autumn migration has well and truly started. A brief 90 minute foray into the field yesterday (between the heavy showers) produced 3 Yellow-browed Warblers and a Common Rosefinch.
Yellow-browed Warblers arriving from Siberia this early and in such numbers is unprecedented.
Saw a fascinating bird fight this morning with a heron chasing a great white egret (which was much bigger than the heron) all over the reservoir. Was just like when crows chase and dive bomb a buzzard but on a much bigger scale.
It’s all a bit of a mystery to be honest. There has been a significant extension to their breeding range over recent years and breeding is also taking place earlier. Once ready for migration, birds usually start their journey when conditions are right - high pressure, clear skies etc. - and they head South from their Siberian breeding grounds to winter in Southern Asia
Many thousands of them don’t get it right and end up appearing in places they shouldn’t be. 20 years ago they were considered to be a rarity in the UK, now they’re just classed as a scarce migrant.
We had at least four individuals in our garden last Autumn, I expect this year it will be a similar story.
Had a trip over to Whalsay today to see a very nice Yellow-breasted Bunting. Took a bit of finding, but it was worth the effort. They are becoming increasingly rare as the world population is in catastrophic decline due to hunting, so I may not get many more opportunities to see one.
Senseless. It’s not big enough to eat, surely ? It’s not like it’s going to be taking your lambs is it ? Does it happen to bear the colours of your political opponents ? Does it eat the seeds of some sacred bush ? Are they used in Chinese medicine ? I confess I am at a loss over this one.
Beautiful light on the water, by the way. It looks like molten metal.
They’ve gone from lowest risk/least concern in 2000 to critically endangered in 2017. If the trend continues, they could well be extinct in the not so distant future.
They are a rare vagrant in the UK - with most individuals being recorded in Shetland.
after a precipitous decline it is now thought to have potentially completely disappeared from Finland, Belarus, Ukraine and large parts of Russia (Kamp et al. 2015). In the autumn, birds stop-over in large numbers to moult in the Yangtze Valley, China, before continuing on to their winter quarters. It winters in a relatively small region in South and South-East Asia
The declines, which apparently began in the west of the breeding range, have since spread eastwards to affect the vast majority or even the entire population. Declines are believed to be driven primarily by trapping in its passage and non-breeding ranges.
So, basically all of the countries that it breeds in, winters in or travels through on passage.
When I worked in Cyprus in the 80’s the locals put glue down in their yards with bird feed and picked up the stuck birds. They cooked them and called it “the meal of the 6 little birds”. It was a delicacy.
In the RAF air force base in Cyprus the following is a recent regular occurance.
It’s along article but one paragraph stands out. I beleive this is 2015/16.
A report published by the charity BirdLife International in August revealed that an estimated 2.3 million birds are now killed in Cyprus every year (and 25 million across the Mediterranean as a whole).