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Deep blue skies over the back garden, anticipating the return of the Swifts for the summer.
Any day now, I’m expecting to hear the soul-lifting, overhead screech of Swifts, freshly returned from their marathon migration. I love Swifts and I’m not alone in that sentiment. There is something joyous and energetic about them, a certain magic in their always-on-the-wing lifestyle. Nesting is the only thing they land for, not to sleep, not to feed, not to mate!
Enthusiasts all around the country form local Swift conservation groups. In our part of Yorkshire, Swift groups include Scarborough, Whitby, York and Helmsley. They promote the conservation of these birds and awareness of their needs to help this iconic and declining species to thrive. Groups coordinate keen volunteers to survey for Swifts and contribute their sightings. Some groups make wooden swift nest-boxes to put on suitable buildings, talk to property-owners in areas with Swift colonies or campaign for conservation measures in new build projects.
One of the wonderful things about Swifts is that they are closely associated with people and buildings, as much a bird seen screaming around tall city buildings as wheeling around villages and fields. A ‘screaming party’ of swifts screeching and chasing each other around roof-top level or lower on a summer’s evening indicates a colony nesting nearby.
Many sites are unwittingly lost as houses are re-roofed, renovated or demolished. Equally, new housing developments can incorporate special hollow bricks in suitable places so that swift nesting opportunities are built-in. ‘Swift bricks’, are a tried and tested solution to the Swift housing problem. Completely sealed off from the inside of the building, they need only have a small oval hole showing on the outside, through which the birds gain entry.
Traditional nest sites are tricky to spot. The bird lives up to its name and flies in so quickly, squeezing into a narrow hole to its hidden nest perhaps in the eaves of a house. You have to be very patient or fortunate to be watching the right place when it happens to bomb in with food or nesting material. If you are lucky enough to see a swift enter a possible nest site please do submit the sighting to a suitable recording scheme. (More at bottom of post.)
A precise point record, be it a grid reference or an address can be used by an ecological data centre to produce maps of hot-spots. These can help Local Authority planners or conservation agencies to target measures to help Swift populations. If we know where they are nesting we can ensure that nest sites are available into the future. To be useful, such maps of nest sites depend on good coverage of our towns and villages. That’s where you come in. If we can recruit Swift-spotters in every town, suburb or village we can help the Data Centre generate a comprehensive picture of where Swifts breed. In doing so we can inform Planning departments and community Swift groups where to particularly target conservation measures – Such as asking for Swift bricks in new housing developments or offering external Swift boxes to fix on to the outside of buildings close to existing colonies.
Swift boxes ready for fixing on existing buildings (photo Twitter @York_Swifts)
SwiftMapper app showing sightings, nest sites and swift boxes in York area (photo Twitter @York_Swifts)
Swift groups promote use of artificial nest boxes, but recording and protecting existing Swift nesting colonies is vital.
For me the truly exciting bit is that nearly everyone can contribute simply by walking around their local neighbourhood streets. You can soon establish if Swifts are present. Swifts very high in the sky or feeding over fields or water bodies may have travelled some way to feed, so its the screaming around buildings to look for which indicates breeding colonies. Screaming parties at roof-top level, suggest nest-sites in those buildings and are especially worth reporting. Even more valuable are observations of Swifts entering a building, eg disappearing under a roof tile, or behind fascias or soffit boards under the eaves. The best time to look for ‘screaming swifts’ is from late May to late July, around dusk on a warm, still evening, or early morning.
Traditional Swift nest sites are more often found in the roofs of older housing stock, such as these Victorian terraces.
Having had initial conversations with colleagues in the Planning Department at Scarborough Borough Council, I know that we can make good use of this knowledge to inform better planning policy towards Swifts so these iconic sickle-winged summer visitors continue to thrive in our neighbourhoods for years to come. So join me and the other enthusiasts in looking out for Swifts. They will be back any day now and we can get started!
Useful Swifts resources:
National charity Swift Conservation is a great source of info on swifts, boxes, guidance for builders and home-owners.
Swift Awareness Week runs every year in late June – early July. This year it is 3rd -11th July. Maybe you could help raise awareness in your local community? Follow @swiftsweek and @saveourswifts on Twitter.
Swift Mapper is a free smartphone app developed in partnership with the RSPB. It is handy for plotting Swift sightings or nest sites on the go. A user-friendly app like this makes it easy for a wider range of people to contribute, including non-specialists. Swift Mapper records can be retrieved by the Ecological Data Centre at the end of each season.
The important thing is to send your records somewhere, be it a Swift group, Swift Mapper or direct to the Data Centre.
Barn Owls use rough grassland to hunt mice and voles. This one was seen during lockdown hunting near to the car park.
Whitby Abbey attracts thousands of visitors a year and is served by a large car-park maintained by Scarborough Borough Council. This season a new grounds maintenance regime will be trialled there to help wildlife.
Scarborough Borough Council is keen to manage its public open spaces in ways that are more sympathetic for wildlife and people to co-exist. The Parks department is exploring options for a number of areas in the Borough and is keen to form stronger links with partners and community groups to manage public areas. The scheme for the Whitby Abbey car park is one such pilot project.
As well as hard standing there are grass banks and verges and an overflow parking area of rough grass. Great crested newts and other amphibians breed in the Abbey pond nearby and members of the local natural history group the Whitby Naturalists Club believe that some may hibernate in the dry-stone walls surrounding the car park. Newts have certainly been seen on occasions crossing the car park. During lockdown, a Barn Owl was seen using the fields around the car park to hunt for prey. A Skylark was heard singing over the rough grass only today, while operatives were carrying out management nearby, so this bodes well for the future co-existence of wildlife and visitors.
Small mammals and amphibians hide in the stone walls around the car park provide. Longer grass here will benefit them.
Whitby Town Mayor, Linda Wild was happy to help plant some trees over winter in a corner of the car park.
In liaison with Whitby Naturalists’ Club, the Parks and Countryside Service has developed proposals to improve the habitat opportunities for these creatures. A margin of longer grass will be left around the outer wall of the car park and on the banks between the parking areas, cut annually after summer season. This will allow more wildflowers to bloom, providing food for bees and butterflies as well as cover for smaller animals, including voles, which Barn Owls hunt.
The entrance and the areas used for parking and picnics will be mown regularly as usual so as not to inconvenience car park users. A small group of native trees has been planted in the corner of the car park too. Whitby Naturalists’ Club will monitor the plants and animals using the area, and help clear the long grass when it is cut at the end of the season.
The summer overflow area of the car park will still be mown, with banks left longer for invertebrates and other animals.
The Council’s Ecologist, Tim Burkinshaw said “We are keen to see more initiatives like this, where a more enlightened approach can be taken to managing public areas in the Council’s care. Far from compromising the use-ability of these spaces to the public and visitors, we think that it will add to their enjoyment to see more wildflowers, pollinating insects and even, if they are lucky, iconic animals like Great Crested Newts and Barn Owls.”
Tim continued, “The link with Whitby Naturalists’ Club is valuable and very welcome, enabling us to do things which resources otherwise would not permit, such as monitoring the wildlife and helping with the seasonal habitat management. It’s a win-win”
Councillor Linda Wild, Town Mayor of Whitby helped with some tree planting recently, saying
“I was delighted to offer my personal support to this project by planting one of the trees. It is a wonderful collaboration between the Borough Council and the Whitby Naturalists. It’s such a simple and effective way to promote the environment and encourage wildlife. At this month’s Town Council meeting, I reported on the tree planting. I’m pleased to say there was unanimous support for this initiative.”
A corner of the car park planted with native trees and where grass will be allowed to grow longer for wildlife
The Parks department is planning to place small signs in places where the grass is left to grow longer, pointing out the benefits to wildlife. Cutting and removing the long grass after wildflowers have set seed should, in time, reduce the fertility of the soil and favour an increase in the wildflowers amongst the grasses. Monitoring over a number of years will hopefully track a gradual improvement in biodiversity, but changes should be apparent from this summer, with more bugs and butterflies enjoying the habitat areas.
The Yorkshire Seals Group works hard to protect and conserve our two resident species of seals along our coastline, Common Seal and Grey Seal. Recently they have arranged for Seal Alliance code of conduct signs to be placed at key spots where visitors may come into proximity with wild seals and pose a risk to the animals’ welfare as well as to the humans. These are wild creatures and protective of their young and have sharp teeth!
Seals can be encountered along our coastline, both onshore and on the water but they are very susceptible to disturbance. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
There is definitely a need to raise awareness and educate visitors. Often people get too close, perhaps to photograph them, unaware of the impacts of their behaviour on the health and welfare of the seals. A seal colony near Ravenscar in particular has seen ill-informed visitors approaching the seals and causing distress to the animals.
The central message of the code of conduct is to give the seals space and do not disturb.
The Yorkshire Seals team of nearly 30 members has been heavily active along the Yorkshire coast over the recent winter pupping season. Their continuous presence for 90 straight days on-site at Ravenscar over November-January resulted in a great improvement compared to the previous season, mitigating human disturbance on-site thorough awareness-raising.
The team positively engaged with over 5000 visitors, despite lockdown or tiered restrictions on travel (affecting both visitors and volunteers). Their presence helped support a higher pup success rate, higher weaning weight and prevented the human-attributed pup mortality seen at Ravenscar in the 2019/2020 season. Footfall is expected to increase dramatically at all Yorkshire monitoring sites as social distancing restrictions ease.
A collective of seal conservation organisations around the UK came together to produce the Watching Seals Well tips.
Signs explaining the impacts of irresponsible behaviour are already up at Ravenscar in partnership with the North York Moors Park and National Trust. A second batch should be ready soon, hopefully to go up at Flamborough, Filey, and Cayton Bay. Messages are simple and easy to understand, emphasising the need to keep a safe distance (which is much greater than most people imagine) and to be aware of the signs that the animals’ natural behaviour is affected.
The Yorkshire Seal Group and has worked with the Seal Alliance on the Code of Conduct for seal disturbance. Approved by DEFRA, it is the first UK-wide code of conduct for seals and gives the public guidelines for responsible seal watching. There are plans to install further information signs at Filey at both the Coble Landing (Arndale Ravine) and Carr Naze (top of the Country Park).
For further information on any of the group’s activities or their seal monitoring findings visit their website at www.yorkshireseals.org. They have data from two main sites on populations, disturbance events, pupping, entanglements and welfare interventions etc. You can also email yorkshireseals@gmail.com
The chalk cliffs of the Flamborough Headland range in height from about 30 feet, here at Selwick’s Bay to a dizzying 300 feet at Bempton. Photo by Cu00e1tia Matos on Pexels.com
The Yorkshire Coast is re-knowned for its colonies of breeding seabirds. The Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protection Area for Birds revolves around the important numbers of Kittiwake, Gannet, Guillemot and Razorbill, plus associated species which make up the seabird assemblage (ie also Puffin, Fulmar, Shag etc).
In normal times (when we are not battling a pandemic) a big team of seabird monitoring volunteers, marshalled by a Research Assistant based at RSPB Bempton Cliffs Reserve does sterling work counting birds, nests and chicks, to derive both overall population estimates and ‘productivity’ (ie breeding success). With a colony located on sheer inaccessible cliff faces, you can imagine the scale of the challenge even in ordinary circumstances.
Despite the significant challenge of Coronavirus restrictions on volunteer-based surveys, the Bempton team managed to conduct a reduced programme of monitoring in 2020, adding to a growing body of scientific data. Full colony surveys were not possible, but sampled ‘plots’ on the cliffs were monitored to assess eggs and chicks and fledging. This provides vital productivity data which means whether the birds successfully raising young (eg offspring per pair) as opposed to knowing the total population.
It is hoped, that with the easing of Covid-19 restrictions a good survey programme can again be carried out in 2021. A summary of the 2020findings is reproduced in this post. First, an aside on the practicalities of observations.
Gannets build obvious nests, spaced a beak’s-reach apart, so are one of the easier seabirds to monitor nests and chicks. Photo by Susanne Jutzeler on Pexels.com
For some species one can count active nests and fledged chicks with some confidence, so the unit is ‘Apparently Occupied Nests’ (AON). Gannets, Kittiwakes and Herring Gulls, for example, build quite obvious nests. For other species like Guillemots and Razorbills (without a nest, just laying eggs on ledges) ‘Apparently Occupied Sites’ (AOS) are counted. Merely counting the total and dividing by two might seem a useful shortcut for estimating pairs, but non-breeding adults confuse the picture. Failed nesting attempts or ‘cryptic’ nest sites (that means hard to see nest sites – such as Puffins in burrows or openings in the cliff) also add to the challenge of obtaining accurate population counts.
Here are some takeaways (reproduced, with permission) from the 2020 annual seabird monitoring report for the SPA:
“2020 has been an unprecedented year for everyone, and the Flamborough and Filey Coast SPA Seabird Monitoring Programme did not escape the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. With a two-month lockdown in place throughout England during peak egg laying and incubation for many species, it was hard to imagine how the monitoring programme could be salvaged. Fortunately, restrictions eased in late May and a much reduced programme of monitoring was commenced with a small monitoring team, following strict safety guidelines.”
“The limited 2020 Seabird Monitoring Programme was successfully completed by a full-time Seabird Research volunteer and a small number of Bempton Cliffs reserve staff and volunteers. Monitoring began in late May just as auks were starting to hatch, with one Guillemot chick and one Razorbill chick present on the first visits on 29 May. Auk productivity monitoring followed an identical methodology to previous years once started, with visits every third day to check for the presence and absence of eggs and chicks.”
Productivity results were as follows: • Fulmar – a mean plot productivity of 0.52 chicks per apparently occupied site. (27 pairs monitored across 3 plots from which 13 chicks fledged.) • Gannet – a mean plot productivity of 0.80 chicks per apparently occupied nest. (266 nests monitored across 5 plots from which 213 chicks fledged.) • Kittiwake – a mean plot productivity of 0.61 chicks per apparently occupied nest. (363 nests monitored across 7 plots from which 222 chicks fledged.) • Herring Gull – a mean plot productivity of 0.61 chicks per apparently occupied nest. (69 nests monitored across 5 plots from which 35 chicks fledged.) • Guillemot – a mean plot productivity of 0.55 chicks per apparently occupied site. (245 pairs monitored across 4 plots from which 134 chicks fledged.) • Razorbill – a mean plot productivity of 0.58 chicks per apparently occupied site. (224 pairs monitored across 4 plots from which 130 chicks fledged.)
A vibrant red leaf on dew-laden grass. Whether your nature interests are in photographing, identifying, conserving or merely appreciating nature, there’s something for you in the new Local Resources page.
This post introduces a new Local Resources page I am creating on the Connecting for Nature blog, featuring a recommended list of web links for local nature groups. For anyone living in, visiting or new to the area who has an interest in nature, conservation, wildlife-watching or biodiversity they are valuable link and you might like to bookmark the page. I will probably come back to it at intervals to update and expand the list of resources,
I’d been mulling over the idea of a local nature groups page for a while. A nudge for me to to put this together, came from a telephone conversation with an ecologist based in the south of England who was doing some work for a new housing development near Scarborough. Her suggestion was that among the activities to help local biodiversity was an element of education to new homeowners of the important habitats and species of the local area, together with ideas for how they might get involved in the protection of local biodiversity.
My natural bias in compiling a list of local groups was the area close to Scarborough, in light of my role as ecologist at Scarborough Borough Council, but my sphere of interest extends some way beyond. You may also find my articles feature the Yorkshire Wolds, the North York Moors and the Howardian Hills for example.I live in Stamford Bridge so I have a strong affinity with the York area too, as well as Ryedale and parts of the East Riding through which I travel and spend leisure time.
At the heart of the Local Resources page is a list of local nature-related groups. If you are a long-time resident of the Yorkshire Coast or a regular visitor you may be familiar with many of these websites or groups already, but there may be some little gems in there that you did not previously know of. You might like to bookmark the page, as opposed to this blog post.
Rather than merely list a long series of links, I include a brief review of each one, to give a flavour of its value. Most of them are websites that I’ve either used or consulted myself on several occasions. That way you can benefit from some local knowledge and home-in on the sites that resonate with you and your particular interests, as well as your location.
In the depths of winter, cutting back hedgerows with a tractor-mounted flail (sometimes called a side-arm) can appear quite brutal. The treatment can look particularly indelicate when a hedge has been allowed to grow out for a few seasons or needs taking back more than usual. This can be for example to regain width for users of a road or track alongside which it runs. It may also be warranted to prevent more precious adjacent habitat – a flower-rich verge for instance – from becoming over-shaded and losing its diversity.
Cutting hedgerows on a two or three year cycle allows better flowering and fruiting for wildlife, including pollinators, birds etc. The downside is of course in those winters when flailing is done it looks more dramatic. It is of course carried out in the winter months so it avoids the bird nesting season (March-August/September). While the immediate appearance is pretty stark, often with ragged ends or torn branches, things do look much less so in the following growing season when the shrubs are in leaf and growing back.
There are areas where a longer rotation of trimming is acceptable and others eg urban or sub-urban roadsides where a more regular annual trim is preferable. Landowners are responsible for the management of their own boundaries. Most hedgerows are thus looked after by farmers and managed with machinery that they have available and to do the job as time-efficiently as possible. Contractors, which may be farmers, often flail roadside hedges in the countryside, under instruction from the Highways Department of North Yorkshire County Council.
Scarborough Borough Council is responsible for road verges within the built-up areas – within the 30mph speed limits. Typically the hedges here are private, domestic boundaries. One prominent place where SBC does use a flail to trim back hedges and trees is along the Old Railway Line (or ‘Cinder Track’). It is not continuously tree-lined but there are some significant lengths. Using a tractor-mounted flail is a resource-efficient method for using public funds.
The implications of more sympathetic methods of management are a greater cost to the service. We are being asked to do more with less every year. Our tree team attend where mature trees have fallen over or need attention, but a hand-pruning approach is not possible along both sides of a 36km of track, so we must manage it in a similar manner to roadside or farmland hedgerows.
As capacity is developed for volunteering along the Cinder Track, under careful supervision, the use of hand tools and a more gentle approach is possible, focusing on especially valuable habitats or more prominent sections. One positive in this regard is our recruitment, this Spring, of a new dedicated Maintenance Ranger for the Cinder Track. I hope we can tell you more about this very soon.
2020 was a strange year in many ways but for our habitat enhancement work on the Cinder Track old railway line it meant two brief spells of volunteer tasks at the start and end of the calendar year. The rest was of course consigned to the large box labelled ‘ wider impacts of Coronavirus’.
A small and Covid compliant volunteer task in October 2020, raking down grass verges to help the flora.
An October task at Hawsker saw a modest and short-lived resumption for The Cinders group, following a set of return-to-volunteering guidelines put together by our partners, North York Moors National Park. The Covid-safety procedures included a shorter session, smaller number of volunteers, (only 5 plus one leader) and social distancing during the whole task. Volunteers and the Leader travelled separately to the work site.
The task saw us return to Hawsker Sidings to continue with grassland management, raking up arisings from the parts of the site mown by tractor and flail. We also cut grass in the scallop-shaped embayments which we created in the rear hedge line in 2018. These being west facing are lovely sun-traps and offer sheltered microclimates for insects such as butterflies, grasshoppers and solitary bees, which also have access to bare soil there.
An SBC tractor makes its way past The Cinders volunteers after trimming hedges further down the track.
Alas this brief respite, enabling some conservation volunteering to resume was not to last beyond the Christmas break, as we entered Lockdown 3 and the National Park volunteering managers took the responsible decision to halt site-based volunteering again. We await the next change of Covid-19 guidance to see how conservation volunteer work will fare in 2021.
While they may be associated with our Christmas culture and folklore, Turtle Doves are summer visitors to the UK, migrating thousands of miles every year. A modest but seemingly steady population of Turtle Doves breeds in the forests, farmland and rural countryside of north-east Yorkshire. This is all the more remarkable given that the bird (Streptopelia turtur, to give its scientific name) is on the Global Red List of species vulnerable to extinction.
Turtle Doves are normally very elusive, but there are exceptions! Photo Alison Tubbs.
In the UK the species has declined by 95% since 1995, so spotting (or indeed hearing one, with its distinctive purring call) is a truly special privilege. Regular readers of the CFN blog will be familiar with the North Yorkshire Turtle Dove Project, which enjoyed almost four years of project funding until this autumn but whose survey works will continue to be supported by volunteers while future funding is pursued.
As we think about Christmas approaching and Turtle Doves are called to mind in our carols, there are reasons to be cheerful about our Yorkshire population of this rarest of summer visitors. The population here seems to be holding steady with between 50-100 singing males recorded in each of the last five years.
They are notoriously difficult to find and count accurately, nesting in dense scrubby habitat, often in remote parts of the North Yorkshire Forest. Even to hear the males singing their territorial purring one has to be up before dawn on a calm spring morning. Dedicated volunteers have been doing just that for each of the last five years as part of a coordinated effort to understand the population size and trends.
Turtle Doves are most vocal in the first two hours after sunrise and sometimes in late evening, which in June can mean unsocial hours for the surveyors. (Though astonishingly some birds which take up territories in rural village locations are known to bend the rules here.)
We can only make an intelligent approximation of the exact numbers until a longer run of surveys has been accomplished. Even so, this year’s count suggests the 2020 breeding season boasted a minimum of 86 singing male Turtle Doves. We can’t be sure if each of them represents a breeding pair or indeed if they raised any young, but for a species once thought to remain only in the south-east of England that has to be something worth celebrating this festive season.
Project Officer for NYTDP, Richard Baines gives a round-up of the population trends in his blog for the North York Moors National Park, which was the inspiration for this post. Rich gives more insight on the survey numbers and plans for 2021.
STOP PRESS – Yorkshire Population now boasts a placing as the third biggest stronghold area for Turtle Dove in the UK, after Kent and Suffolk!
What a great early Christmas present this news is, to the dedicated volunteer surveyors and the project officer and partners who have worked hard over the last few years to put our Yorkshire birds firmly on the map.
Even more exciting, there will be a coordinated national survey of Turtle Doves in 2021 (More details of this on the Rare Breeding Birds Panel website, including Counties covered and how to volunteer.)
Grants for heritage have re-opened on a rolling basis from NLHF.
After a two-month pause, the National Lottery Grants for Heritage programme has reopened for applications for small and medium project funding applications. This is the first of two phases. (Phase two will open in February 2021.) There is a total of £10 million for phase one with grants of between £3,000 and £10,000 or £10,000 and £100,000.
Phase one funding is designed to focus on organisational resilience or on projects that deliver inclusion in heritage. The funding can cover any reasonable costs that help an organisation to recover and become viable. The majority of costs should relate to resilience of inclusion focused work.
The mandatory outcome must be achieved in all projects:
• A wider range of people will be involved in heritage (mandatory).
• The funded organisation will be more resilient.
NLHF Heritage Grants must involve a wider range of people in heritage. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
The funding can support two types of projects:
• Organisations and communities working with heritage to begin to recover and adapt in the continuing COVID-19 crisis.
• Focused on inclusion and led by and/or engaging diverse groups typically under-represented in heritage, such as young people, minority ethnic and LGBT+ communities, disabled people and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
Not-for-profit organisations, local authorities, public sector organisations or private owners of heritage can apply. Applications will be assessed within eight weeks and proposals will then be discussed at the next decision meeting. This is a rolling programme and therefore there are no deadlines.
Connecting for Nature 