Tag Archives: Ornithology

Join me for a “Birds & Flowers” talk in Cambridge on the 12th September!

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If you are in or around Cambridge next week, I’m giving a talk on Friday 12th September at the Cambridgeshire Bird Club about my recent book Birds & Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship.

The event takes place in the Wilkinson Room, St. John’s Church, Hills Road. Doors open at 7pm and the talk begins at 7.30pm. There’s a £2.00 charge for non-members – more details can be found by following this link.

I’ll bring copies of both Birds & Flowers and Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society, if anyone wants to buy a signed book.

I hope to see you there!

Pollination by birds: the curious case of Europe

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Earlier this year I was invited by the editor of British Wildlife magazine to write a piece for their Changing Perspectives section about how odd Europe is when it comes to bird pollination. It’s based on one of the chapters in my book Birds & Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship.

If you subscribe to the magazine, it will appear in the August issue, though I’m happy to send a PDF to anyone who doesn’t subscribe (or has not read the book) – use the Contact Page. The main accompanying photograph is by one of my former students, Lisa King, who kindly allowed me to use it.

Waxwings on my birthday!

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waxwings-by-stephen-valentine

Waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) may possibly be my favourite bird, and I’ve posted a couple of times about encounters with them – see: Waxwing winter and Waxwings in Northants.

So for my birthday last weekend I was stunned and delighted by a gift from my wife Karin: a specially commissioned illustration of waxwings by a very talented artist friend of ours, Stephen Valentine, who is based in Denmark.

I think Stephen has beautifully captured both the alert intelligence of these birds, always on the look-out for food and predators, and their subtle and striking colouration.  It’s such an honour to own a piece like this!

If you’re interested, Stephen regularly takes commissions; you can find him on Facebook by searching for “Studio Sejerø”, or I can put you in touch with him.

Thanks Karin, thanks Stephen! 🙂

The Biodiversity Impact of Waterside Campus: an interim report on the bird surveys

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bird-gains-and-losses

In previous posts I’ve discussed the work that we are doing monitoring the effects of building a large, new campus for the University of Northampton (see: Monitoring the biodiversity impact of the new Waterside Campus and a video I did of a talk about this project).  We have finally got round to writing an an interim report on the bird surveys we have been conducting (2014-2016), repeating the initial baseline surveys that were carried out in 2012-13.  The executive summary is below and you can download a PDF of the full report here.

As you will see it’s a mixed picture, with some losses and some gains of species, but we are broadly optimistic that the planned landscaping and habitat creation will have a positive effect come the 2018 opening date of Waterside Campus.  It’s important to note that studies such as this which follow up initial ecological surveys and assess the subsequent impact over time are extremely rare as there is no statutory obligation to do so.

Winter surveys will begin shortly and I will report back late next year, time willing.  Any questions or comments, please let me know.

 

Executive summary

  • Surveys of winter and spring bird diversity are being carried out to assess the effects of construction activities and habitat creation on local biodiversity at the University of Northampton’s new Waterside Campus.

 

  • These results are compared to pre-construction baseline surveys in winter 2012-13 and spring 2013, undertaken as part of the ecological impact assessment of the site.

 

  • Results after two repeat sets of surveys (winter 2014-15 and 2015-16; spring 2015 and 2016) are presented, with birds grouped into RSPB Green, Amber and Red categories.

 

  • Winter bird diversity has dropped from 41 species to 31 species; more Red and Amber listed birds have been lost than Green listed species.

 

  • Spring bird diversity has dropped from 40 to 36 species; more Green and Amber listed birds were lost, but the number of Red listed species increased slightly.

 

  • As well as losing species the site has gained birds that were not recorded in the baseline surveys, including Green-listed Coot and Treecreeper, the Amber-listed Stock dove, and the Red-listed House sparrow.

 

  • In addition, most of the “missing” birds are known to occur at sites 500m to 1000m from Waterside and could return following the end of construction and appropriate habitat creation.

 

  • Surveys will continue until after Waterside Campus opens in 2018, and analyses will be undertaken to tease out how these changes in bird numbers are related to changes to both the local and regional environments.

 

  • Outputs from this project so far include two conference presentations and two final year dissertations (one completed and one planned). At least one peer-reviewed research paper is anticipated.