BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Torchepot" data-source="post: 3479565" data-attributes="member: 123265">Earlier this year I talked to someone studying a pair of Goshawk that had recently colonised a new area adjacent to one of their UK strongholds. They mentioned a pretty dramatic change in the populations of several species. Within 3 yrs rabbits had virtually disappeared, and numbers of magpie and grey squirrel were noticeably reduced. It was speculated that this would impact other predators too, particularly foxes which were previously often seen hunting the rabbits.In our heavily wooded part of France goshawk, hawfinch and pine marten are all present with pine marten (and red fox) being particularly common and local flocks of wintering hawfinch often numbering 40 or 50. Curiously magpie is virtually absent locally (though common enough in nearby farmland) and red squirrel numbers don't seem to be very high (I'm guessing this has more to with the abundance of martens than the presence of goshawk though).The hawfinches appear to have a strong affinity with the hornbeams in our area, also oak woodland with an understory of holly. We have a large arboretum nearby and strangely I've never seen a hawfinch there in eight years. Are they just using the UK ones for roosting? Monitoring roadkills on our very quiet country roads within about 15km radius our commonest vertebrate casualty is sadly fire salamander but pine marten is the most frequent mammal casualty, followed by hedgehog and fox and occasionally red squirrel.</blockquote>

Verification