Where Have All The Birds Gone?

This is a question that I, and other Naturalists, have been asking for a while, and I'll come back to it later. Yesterday morning, I headed to the Point for first light to have a look on the sea, and the lack of birds, particularly for this time of year, brought that question to my mind once again.

 

Under 6 oktas of cloud cover with a south-easterly wind force 2 - 3, I headed along the shore to where I was going to position myself for a bit of migration monitoring in the form of sea-watching and vis migging. 

 

There was some vis, but it was slow, and the direction of movement was either westerly or easterly. This stretch of coast at the head of the Fylde peninsula, overlooking the border between Liverpool and Morecambe Bay, runs east to west, and any visible migration observed from the Point moves either west or east. As a general rule, the movement in spring is easterly and in autumn westerly. However, because of the wind direction there was some autumnal westerly movement, but also some birds were moving east into the wind. 

 

Anyway, all the vis that I recorded were 12 Meadow Pipits, three Grey Wagtails and three Linnets. Quiet indeed! As the tide was running in there were a number of waders roosting on the shore, and I was hoping for a Curlew Sandpiper or two amongst the Dunlin, except there were no Dunlin! Roosting waders numbered 43 Oystercatchers, nine Turnstones, 201 Sanderlings and 47 Ringed Plovers.

 

Ringed Plovers
 

The sea was equally as quiet as the vis, and the sea-watching has been quiet here for a few years now, and that question 'where have all the birds gone' keeps coming back to haunt me. Cormorants moved west from their roost to foraging areas in Liverpool Bay and numbered 34, and the best of the rest was three Gannets, 33 Common Scoters, two Auk sp., a pair of Eiders, a Guillemot and only five Sandwich Terns.

 

Just five Sandwich Terns! At this time of year their numbers should be in three figures, but the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is wreaking havoc with Sandwich Tern populations as well as that of Gannets, and partly answers the question of where have all the birds gone. 

 

Out on the golf course were a few birds, and it often holds a number of migrants because there is quite a lot of cover, and there are also large open areas of course, being a golf course, that attract pipits, wagtails, finches, hirundines and waders etc. 

 

A flock of 14 Curlews were feeding out on the golf course, with a single individual of their cousin, the Whimbrel. I thought that there was a few Swallows moving, but then I realised they were birds that were feeding over the golf course, and were just wheeling over my head as they flew round. A conservative estimate put the Swallow numbers at about 60 - 70.

 

Whilst I was watching an Atlantic Grey Seal bobbing up and down in the sea through my scope, I heard a Yellow Wagtail calling, and when I looked up there were three that had been flushed by some golfers. They then headed in the correct autumnal direction for here to the west.

 

The only grounded migrant at the Point was a single Wheatear, but probably the best, or most exciting bird of the morning came in the form of an Osprey that I picked up low over the sea heading west. What was interesting, that by flying just over the sea, it wasn't attracting the attention of any Gulls that would normally give an Osprey a hard time. The views were great through my scope, but the views through my camera not so great, as you can see below. But you can tell what it is though. 

 

Osprey at sea (above & below)

 

 

Even though I didn't have any grounded migrants to speak of, I decided to have a look in the cemetery to see if there were any, err grounded migrants, and unsurprisingly there were none. I did have four Whimbrel go over, heading south-east, so that was okay. 

 

My next, and final stop, was at the Quay to see if there were any waders feeding on the newly exposed mud created by the falling tide. And indeed, there were, but nothing scarce, just 188 Redshanks, 10 Oystercatchers and a Curlew. I had four Little Egrets at the Quay, which is a good count for me at this site. 

 

I had walk round onto the estuary, and at the old ferry port I had two Ravens. It started off with one bird calling from some of the superstructure, and this attracted in another bird from across the river. I encountered them again when I headed back round to the Quay. At this point the heavens opened, and I had to beat a hasty retreat back to my car. 

 

Raven
 

That question of where have all the birds gone has been cropping up a lot recently. In fact, you could say that it has been cropping up for fifty years, but over the past few years, and this year in particular, things seem very noticeable that all is not well. Of course, all the main conservation organisations have been talking about population declines, but I've noticed more and more from Naturalists blogging about their local patch, that there is a distinct lack of birds.

 

Climate change is undoubtedly one of the major players in the mix, and I think that adding in the impacts from HPAI, a perfect storm is brewing. There are other factors at play, and how big an impact they are having is not clear. An example of this is lead shot, and the fact that there is still no decline in its use. In February 2020, shooting organisations across the UK called for a voluntary phasing out of the use of lead shot for game shooting, and two years on a study has found no decrease in its use at all! In fact, over 6,000 tonnes of lead shot are still finding its way into the British countryside annually, contaminating land and posing a significant risk to the health of wildlife, as well as that of people and livestock.  

 

So, where have all the birds gone is a difficult question to answer, and it is a question that we need to be able to answer soon, before it is too late!