Good news for Bitterns following decades of effort

Bittern (Bob Garrett)

News that the number of booming male Bitterns has increased again, to 283 across Britain, including seven in Wales last year, is hugely welcome. In the late 1990s, I remember when there were only 11 in England and none in Wales, the last having been heard on Anglesey in 1984. As the population shrank, researchers raced against time to understand the ecology of this secretive reedbed heron, whose deep bass call carries up to 1km on a still morning.

Science informed a major programme of wetland restoration, in which pools within reedbeds were deepened to enhance fish populations and the habitat opened up to enable birds to feed more easily. But with most Bitterns on coastal wetlands in eastern England that will be lost to rising sea levels, conservation organisations also created suitable habitat at sites that had been drained or abandoned more than a century previously. At one such site, RSPB Cors Ddyga in the Cefni Valley, five males boomed last week, fortifying further their presence on the island.

Cors Ddyga also hosted a Lapland Bunting and Green-winged Teal on Sunday as well as four Ruff that have overwintered and its first Willow Warbler and Little Ringed Plover of the year. Elsewhere on Anglesey, seven Cattle Egrets and another Little Ringed Plover were on a flooded field at Valley and the first House Martin on Sunday at RSPB South Stack, where up to four Black Redstarts and eight Twite dropped in on migration. At least a dozen Twite remain at Flint dock. The first Sandwich Terns are back at Cemlyn lagoon, Wales’ only regular breeding colony, while single Ospreys have returned to Cors Dyfi, Llyn Brenig and the Glaslyn Valley, where a replacement nest site was constructed recently using branches thrown by Storm Darragh. Viewing centres at all three locations have reopened for the season.

A Hoopoe sang briefly on Bardsey, where staff returned to the region’s only Bird Observatory last week and ringed Jack Snipe and Woodcock making journeys to northeastern Europe. Other winter visitors still in North Wales include 46 Whooper Swans from Porthmadog Cob that will soon be heading for Iceland, Kumlien’s Gull and Slavonian Grebes irregularly at Aber Ogwen, with more grebes and a Long-tailed Duck in Beddmanarch Bay, but the origins of a Gyr Falcon that plucked a Herring Gull near Rhosneigr remain a matter of conjecture,
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Many seaducks that wintered off Old Colwyn have already left east over northern England, including presumably the several Surf Scoters that remain on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Following them east were Little Gulls feeding in the Menai Strait at the weekend, while Short-eared Owls dotted around the Anglesey coast are also moving to their breeding areas.