Bird conference

British Trust for Ornithology, Annual Conference, Midland Hotel, Manchester, 1st March 2025

My first such conference (the only others I have attended have been about rare books and manuscripts), which tied in with visiting and staying with my younger daughter who is studying at Liverpool University, a long overdue but somewhat less than fruitful look at some archival papers nearby and the terrific Turner exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery back in Manchester.

The drive up to Liverpool was rather gruelling, multiple accidents on the M6 meaning it took five hours, two more than it should have done. My daughter and I share our birthday and it was a chance to go out for our traditional curry dinner at the splendid, beautifully decorated Delhi House on Albert Dock. Service was super friendly and the food delicious. Liverpool to Manchester has become a very easy drive, taking not much more than half an hour but £35 for parking seemed extortionate. The Midland is a lot grander than it was when I was a student in Manchester, a city for which I have a deep soft spot. The conference room and catering were excellent and it was just a nice place to be. I did appreciate Manchester’s neo-Gothic architecture when I was there in the 1980s, but not enough. The buildings have been cleaned and I am punctuating this post with photos of some of them. The conference was superbly organised, very informative and hugely enjoyable. The lady I happened to sit next to turned out to have had a grandfather who worked for the same firm of booksellers for which my wife used to work. Small world. The birds on the programme cover, above, are of course Nightingale, Moorhen and Curlew, but the fourth defeated me. It is the rare Dotterel, a kind of plover, most unfairly named, apparently, for its foolishness.

CEO Professor Juliet Vickery emphasised the core values of the organisation: Birds, Science, People. She seems a very dynamic and effective individual. She talked about various threats, such as the mosquito borne Usutu virus which particularly affects Blackbirds, known about thanks to surveys showing the rapid decline of the birds in Greater London. It isn’t a direct threat to humans, but climate change is enabling it to come here. As she said, a big [bad] moment for bio-security. Wind turbines, rightly advocated as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, can be bad for birds too and so there is a need to track foraging activity, but out at sea it is difficult to measure numbers, flight behaviour and height, although cameras and radar are good for the bigger birds at least. The BTO is investing in growing and supporting its network and loyal membership and on bringing nature into the lives of those who feel excluded from it. It was an inspiring start.

Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square

Dr Máire Kirkland’s talk (each talk was twenty minutes long which seemed perfect to me, the shorter five-minute ones in the afternoon felt perhaps a bit rushed) was entitled “Extreme Migratory Connectivity: Unravelling the Decline of Nightingales in the UK”. They come here to breed but winter in Africa where there has been a major study. The population here is down by about 90% since the 1960s and the range is much smaller, although they are doing quite well elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Berlin where green spaces in the city are rather wilder. In the UK scrub clearance and deer browsing are problematic – Nightingales rely on understorey nesting. Geolocators are deployed which give light, date and time data, good for longitude but a bit vague for latitude – and they have to be retrieved from the birds so data only comes from returning birds. A few GPS tags were used in 2023 which are some 10,000 times more accurate. ‘Our’ birds winter in quite a small area centred around The Gambia. They are vulnerable to environmental change there, especially since they tend to stay together, rather than mixing with other populations (Italian and French for example) which winter in more suitable habitats. Clearance in Africa for tourism is not helping. There is a need to protect both habitats.

Santiago Cárdenas told us about the successes of the Garden BirdWatch scheme, begun 30 years ago. Greenfinch decline is attributable to trichonomiasis transmitted through saliva, a result of food sharing and sick birds attempting to eat but being unable to, regurgitating seeds which healthy finches then pick up. We know all this through amateur citizen science. Bird tables are now feeding method non grata (both the RSPB and Chris Packham have made this point,) which makes me wonder if the BTO will change the name of its quarterly garden bird magazine, Bird Table, of which more in another post. Garden BirdWatch now includes recordings of visits by mammals including pets, bees, butterflies and other insects, amphibians and reptiles. Gardens are increasingly havens for butterflies. The information is endlessly useful: we know that Siskins visit gardens more in low birch seed years, we know more about Tree Bumblebee distribution, and every record helps. We hope to learn why Parakeets are doing quite so well. On my way through the park to the Whitworth Gallery I noticed two birds landing in a tree in front of me. I could only see them in silhouette but could not think what they were, I didn’t recognise the size and shape at all. The Merlin app solved it: they were Parakeets which have not yet made it to my part of the world. I have never been so pleased not to be able to identify a bird. In closing we were reminded to report infections, to clean bird feeders and to take them down for two weeks if infection is present.

The generous breaks in the programme allowed for my little architectural wander around St Peter’s Square and the chance to ask Rachel Taylor a question which has been nagging at me for a long time. As later on, her answer was thorough, complex, and delightfully friendly. Was there any evidence, I wondered, to show that catching and ringing or tagging birds was traumatic for them, was there an impact on behaviour? She explained that this was very carefully studied and that if there was an impact it would render the data meaningless, also that some species handle it very much better than others – some species of gull are fine with it, one is not fine with it at all and so does not get ringed or tagged. She added that the stress they experience is not chronic as human stress can be.

Dr Theresa Frost spoke about waterbird monitoring. The UK is of global importance for waterbirds, many of which come here from the Arctic, tundra and Iceland for example. Volunteer data and international monitoring of migratory populations produces global conservation research, especially in terms of trends such as the increasing number of species becoming amber or red listed recently (whilst others are doing relatively well). Subsite counts also take place, for example low tide surveys or monitoring of sectors within a site. All of the gathered the data is available online. The ban on Curlew hunting in the 1980s was shown to be helpful, but now climate change, food supplies, pollution and water quality are taking their toll. We can also see the positive impact on Mute Swans from the ban on (larger) lead weights in that strange, cruel pastime of angling (PETA have recently suggested that many fish die from the trauma of being caught). Climate change affects numbers and location and rhe birds can go out of step with the invertebrates on which they depend. It s a complex picture: there are short-stopping (some species don’t need or bother to come here, others effectively now short-stop here and don’t go further south), Avian flu, development pressures, infection from farming and harvesting laws and regulations (shellfisheries and wildfowling) have to be taken into account. Data is crucial for ptotecting sites, which ones to protect, where to set the boundaries, and to know if protection is working. The use of drones is currently limited since there is the risk that birds will be disturbed.

Rachel Taylor stood in for a colleague to tell us about raptor monitoring (including ringing and nest monitoring). They divide opinion – White-tailed Sea Eagles predate seabirds (a possible reason for the decline in Fulmar populations) and are accused of taking livestock but raptors are a mirror for the wider health of our wildlife. The ubiquity of the pesticide DDT was first picked up in raptors after all and from them we have seen the positive effect of the ban. Buzzards are on the up in the UK, except in Wales. Could that be as a result of competition from Red Kites I wondered, suddenly feeling guilty about my visit to the Kite feeding station in Gigrin, Wales, a rather artificial set-up for tourists and photographers. I buttonholed Rachel again at a later break – she was able to clear my conscience since there are many factors involved and the two species do not really compete (Buzzards are actually highly dependent on worms to a much greater extent than Red Kites for example). Kestrels are down 67% in Scotland, 26% in England, but we don’t yet know why. Breeding performance is stable, adult survival too at 72% per annum, so there must be an increase in juvenile mortality, but there is currently insufficient coverage to provide an answer. As with Gigrin, some do not approve of the set-up at Otterbourne (see Animal Wild) which provides opportunities to photograph songbirds and Kingfishers. The latter dive into a bowl of fish placed just under the surface in a small lake. I was told at the conference by someone that the fish have their fins cut off for the purpose but that doesn’t happen at Otterbourne I am pleased to say, since the fish have nowhere to go. There was also mention of Ravens as ‘honorary raptors’ which intrigued me. They are not raptors of course but I can see where this comes from based on their size and hunting skills.

STOP PRESS: I have just seen my first butterfly of the year – it really does feel as though spring is beginning to burgeon, bursting to get properly under way, with take from my bird feeders very much down although the numbers of visitors is not. Presumably they are now able to find food elsewhere too.

In the first of the five-minute talks, Dr Hugh Hammer discussed hedgerow cutting, which thanks to EU law could not legally take place in the UK between March 1st and August 31st. DEFRA approached BTO to find out if the dates could or should be changed. Detailed nest recording was carried out, calculating forwards and backwards from laying and fledging, covering fifteen species over ten years. Nest dependence can continue after fledging and so at the August end of the data there were risks. Thanks to the data, the ban was reinstated and became UK law.

Dr Phil Atkinson talked about avian flu. This came from an intensive goose farm in China and the H5NI strain is not seasonal but carries on into the summer and affects wild mammals (seals have recently been found to have died from it, four here, two of them at England’s largest colony on the Norfolk coast). It killed some 20,000 Black-headed Gulls in 2023 and worryingly the virus is being picked up again this year.

Kane Bridges was extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his subject, waterbird colour marking, but I confess I didn’t pay as much attention as I might have done since he came from Slimbridge, a visit to which I did not enjoy at all last year, see previous post:

Slimbridge Wetland Centre – Animal Wild

We learnt about the mysteries of Moorhens from Aurora Gonzalo Tarodo, another speaker who conveyed and shared her great enthusiasm, and from Drew Lyness about the power of the BTO regional networks. Thus inspired I am reaching out on that front. The BTO Youth speakers were similarly, infectiously inspiring.

Question time followed and I grasped the nettle, or, rather, the microphone, to ask about best practice regarding bird flu victims. I had been to two sites at one of which the birds were removed by people in hazmat suits, binned and burnt, at the other they were left on the ground on the basis that potentially infected birds might be scared away and exacerbate the problem elsewhere. At the second site though I had witnessed a crow pecking at the carcase of a tern. Both solutions cannot be right. The jury is out was the answer, but the agencies are working more closely together now.

Three more longer talks, firstly Dr Simon Gillings on Passive Acoustic Monitoring, which has done wonders in hard to reach places generating vast amounts of data. The AI algorithms are not perfect (Merlin has just identified a Blackcap in my garden which I simply don’t believe – but you never know) but the data is invaluable and especially good for nocturnal birds and bats for that matter. “Days with Dotterel” by John Callion was a change of tone. His talk was lyrical, poetic, enchanting, personal and passionate, delivered in a deep, resonant voice. The birds are reliant on their superb camouflage. His discoveries were the result of old-school fieldcraft. Finally Dr James Pearce-Higgins answered the question of whether protected areas actually benefitted birds. This was at the end of a lot of talking about birds and I was flagging slightly. There were many tables and graphs and it was all a bit beyond me, but in short the answer has been proven to be “yes”. Complex statistics and science show the obvious (governments need this) and protected areas are particularly good for rare, declining and habitat specific species.

Professor Vickey closed proceedings with an admirably brief but heartfelt summary and thanks. The only sour note for me was one questioner asking if bird flu could not be spread amongst Canada Geese. – he meant to good effect. I do get utterly sick of this and other speciesisms and I found the joke in poor taste to say the least. But that was the only sour note in an otherwise wonderful day, inspiring me to begin to take part in the Garden Birdwatch, to visit the bird observatory in Alderney and simply generally to continue to rejoice in the wonders of birds.