Bitterns have had one other nice breeding season within the UK with 228 booming males counted in 2022, in keeping with new survey outcomes from the RSPB and Pure England.
- Bitterns are bouncing again once more with a incredible 228 booming males counted throughout their final breeding season.
- They’ve additionally bred efficiently for the primary time at RSPB Saltholme Nature Reserve in Teesside – their most northernly breeding report.
- Bitterns, the UK’s loudest hen, turned extinct within the UK within the 1870s attributable to persecution and draining of their wetland habitat for agriculture.
Bitterns have had one other nice breeding season within the UK with 228 booming males counted in 2022, in keeping with new survey outcomes from the RSPB and Pure England.
Bitterns are depending on reedbed habitats as they transfer via them on the water’s edge, searching for out fish, bugs, and amphibians to eat. They’re the loudest hen within the UK – the males make a outstanding far-carrying booming sound in spring which could be heard three miles away and is used to determine territories and appeal to feminine mates via the season. Bitterns are well-camouflaged so probably the most dependable option to depend them within the breeding season is to pay attention for this tune.
Bittern, copyright Glyn Sellors, from the surfbirds galleries
This secretive member of the heron household turned extinct within the UK within the 1870s attributable to over-hunting for meals and draining of their wetland houses for agriculture.
The species returned to Norfolk in 1900 however dropped once more to only 11 booming males by 1997, leaving them on the sting of a second nationwide extinction. A analysis programme by the RSPB investigated the wants of the birds. A key a part of bringing Bittern numbers again up was recreating, managing and defending their wetland habitats.
Simon Wotton, RSPB senior conservation scientist, stated: “Many wetlands have been drained within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to create space for agriculture, leaving the Bittern fewer and fewer locations to breed. One of many goals of the Bittern work since 1990 was to create and restore appropriate wetlands away from the coast – to create protected websites that wouldn’t be affected by the consequences of local weather change corresponding to rising sea ranges. Rewetting these areas additionally helps forestall flooding and fights the local weather disaster – wetlands are unimaginable carbon sponges, with coastal wetlands locking in additional carbon that forests. A win-win for the character and local weather crises”
Though the identical variety of males have been counted in final 12 months’s survey, the inhabitants is booming. Over half of the UK’s Bittern inhabitants could be discovered on RSPB reserves, with some managed predominantly for his or her reedbeds to draw uncommon wetland birds corresponding to Bittern, Crane and Nice White Egret.
RSPB Salthome, on Teesside, is certainly one of these websites and its conservation efforts have been rewarded with its first breeding success final 12 months, making it probably the most Northern UK report to this point in its latest historical past. Though many of the data are in England (with just a few in Wales), Bittern have been as soon as present in Scotland and Northern Eire, and there’s hope that they may as soon as once more discover themselves there.
Though bitterns are nonetheless a uncommon hen, there are some nice locations to expertise them first-hand:
- Ouse Fen, Cambridgeshire
- Avalon Marshes, Somerset – Ham Wall, Shapwick Heath, Westhay Moor
- Lakenheath Fen, Suffolk
- Minsmere, Suffolk
- Leighton Moss, Lancashire
- St Aidan’s, West Yorkshire
- Cors Ddyga, Anglesey, Wales
- Newport Wetlands, Wales
Monitoring programmes such because the Bittern survey are important for efficient conservation and couldn’t be carried out with out the assistance of 1000’s of volunteers who give their time for nature. Greater than 12,000 individuals volunteer for the RSPB, taking motion to make a constructive influence for nature and the surroundings. For extra info on methods to assist save nature at dwelling, at work, in school and locally, go to www.saveourwildisles.org.uk
