The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Saturday's event was excellent with some first class speakers and topics and a very eclectic audience. Thanks must go to all the organisers, particularly Chris Gunn (BTO North Lincs Rep), Andy Chick and Phil Espin for their efforts. What surprised me was the lack of Bird Club members at the meeting, particularly the individuals (not including Aidan!) who have been extremely vociferous on this Forum advocating the AGM should be a. In Lincoln and b. On a Saturday - I hope the Committee noted their apparent lack of interest and absence and consider some of the speakers for future Bird Club AGM's.

Glad you enjoyed it Stuart I did too. Thanks should particularly go to Chris Gunn, BTO Lincs North rep who was the main driver and organiser of the conference and did the hard work of organising the venue and recruiting all the speakers.

The highlights for me were Richard Broughton's talk on Willow Tits and our poor understanding of what is causing their decline which Lincs is right on the frontier of. It is interesting they have disappeared from East Yorks as well as most of East Lincs. I had not realised how faithful to their territories they are throughout the year. Main reasons for the decline may be the lack of scrub woodland, predation by Great Spots which have increased by 400% and competition from Great Tits which have increased too. I do not see Willow Tits much these days as they no longer have a presence in the areas I bird but the 2013 bird report suggested they were still going down. Hopefully we will have 2014 figures in the next month. Does anyone living in the north and west have a feel for what has been happening in 2015? Richard talked about a new standard survey technique using responses to taped calls. I've asked him to send me the details and I'm wondering if we should try this next year in all the places where Willow Tits were recorded during the atlas to see if there has been a continuing heavy decline.

Also enjoyed Nicholas Watts talk. He's the complete antithesis of the farmer stereotype and a star in the field of farmland bird conservation.

Also thought it was ironic that I mentioned in my talk that Melodious Warbler is the commonest UK bird not on the Lincs list and Sarah Harris mentioned in her talk straight afterwards that using BBS data and similar French data it is predicted Melodious will be breeding in Lincs by 2080 as a result of climate change. I commented that I can't wait that long!

Phil/Stuart

Two short papers (below) on Willow Tits were published in Jan 2015 British Birds, and are worth reading if you can find a copy to borrow, (assuming you don't subscibe);

Nestboxes and fieldcraft for monitoring Willow Tits
The effects of avain nest predation and competition on the Willow Tit in Britain

The first paper has brief details on surveying Willow Tits using playback techniques which might be what Richard was referring to in his talk.

To part answer Phil's question at Whisby NR Willow Tits were stable this year with 3 territories/pairs. I've had the good fortune to find Willow Tit nest sites this last few years (but unfortunately not this year) which helps me to understand what their ecological requirements might be at a site based level.

Cheers

Grahame

Thanks for that, Grahame.

Thanks for reminding me Grahame, just reread those articles and done a little bit of googling. Looks like predation by Great Spots and nest competition from other tits are thought to be much less important than availability of damp scrub woodland and you have plenty of that at Whisby. How many hectares do you have?

Have you tried Richard's playback method for surveying or do you use your own method?

I can tell you that Whisby west of the A46 by-pass (thus excluding Teal Lake which is not an area for Willow Tits anyway) is around 103 hectares. However that area does include sev waterbodies so please dont read this as the area of damp scrub woodland! I'll need to get back to you with something more accurate.

I have tried playback over the last two years (this year I followed the methodology as described in the Last and Burgess paper) but got very mixed results to be honest! However as I spend so much time at Whisby I'm also able to supplement any formal recording with supplementary evidence and luckily Willow Tit song is very far carrying once your ears are tuned in.

Grahame

Thanks Grahame