Curlew
Several of you may have received correspondence from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in recent days, appealing for funding to investigate the decline of Curlew in Britain. A link to the appeal is here:
http://www.bto.org/support-us/appeals/bto-curlew-appeal The facts on the current status of this iconic and evocative species are alarming:
- A 46% decline as a breeding species across the UK between 1994 and 2014 as per the Breeding Bird Survey
- An even more stark decline in the north and west with the figure exceeding 50% in Scotland and Wales.
- To put in context, the UK with 68,000 pairs holds 28% of the entire European breeding population.
- A 20% decline in the wintering population in the UK (currently around 150,000 birds) over the last 15 years as per the Wetland Bird Survey, when numbers are bolstered by arrivals from their breeding groups in Russia and Northern Europe (particularly Scandinavia).
- Recently added to the "red list" of the Birds of Conservation Concern 4 report
- According to
British Birds (Nov 2015 edition), Curlew should now be considered "the most pressing bird conservation priority in the UK"
The decline in numbers at Upton Warren is stark, with counts of 100 regularly achieved from the mid 1980s until 1999 but are now less than 25% of that figure; counts between the early 70s and 90s were still being achieved in the mod 2000s.
The second chart examining trends in the half monthly maxima counts is equally damming even for a shortened period of examination - the blue line is the overall average for the period 1998 to 2015 but compare in particular the first 5 years of the study period (1998 to 2002) in red against the last give years of the data set (2011 to 2015) in green.