BTO Ringing Report also shows historic lows for Willow Tits & Wood Warblers. 2024 saw just 132 Willow Tits and 109 Wood Warblers ringed in UK, lowest for ~65 years since introduction of mist-nets. Not a single Willow Tit chick ringed since 2022. Number of Marsh Tits ringed also declining.

A stroll round a beautiful, but brutally cold Wicken Fen this morning

There is no unambiguous evidence supporting native UK Holocene status for these species involved in this "reintroduction".

A stroll around Wimpole to check if any of the resident Greylags had attracted any White-fronts or Bean geese. Sadly not, with only some of the flock present, but did have a Hawfinch in the woodland shelter belts @cambsbirdclub.bsky.social

There is no plan to release young, and the breeding stock are many (many) generations old. There is research investment into the genetics of the remaining English birds, and the reason that they declined in some places and held on longer in others, any talk about reintroduction is overzealous.

Cause of Twite decline still unknown, and recent genetic testing of captive breeding populations concluding they are not genetically suitable for release...

Hundreds-strong mixed finch flock building up around this plot of winter bird food just outside Westom Colville. Several Brambling present from a quick scan @cambsbirdclub.bsky.social

Bioacoustics as a tool for the detection and monitoring of a scarce woodland bird – the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker paper now live in the latest British Birds journal. Read more:

⚠️ The UK’s smallest and rarest woodpecker, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is a shy and elusive bird. It’s rapidly becoming one of our scarcest breeding birds, with substantial declines since the 1980s. 🧵⬇️ #bioacoustics #ornithology

Extraordinary record of Willow Tit from Moray!! - 250km-ish from nearest breeders or 550km from Scandinavia! @richardkbroughton.bsky.social birdsinmorayandnairn.org/bird-recordi...

Something to celebrate - our 2025 Lesser Spotted Woodpecker report - successful breeding season, the most nests monitored & highest number of chicks fledged per nest since we started in 2015. Acoustic monitoring giving amazing results too, download here www.woodpecker-network.org.uk/images/L_S_W...

A great thread dismantling the latest 'conservation populism' to be floated in Britain. With funding available for species recovery, this is business for some. We'll see more of this pitching for commercial projects that scientists & species experts think is useless. #ornithology #ukbirding

Operation Turtle Dove has issued an official statement expressing their disapproval over the captive breeding and releasing of European Turtle Dove in the UK:

Autumn is coming #FungiFriends #illustration #mushroomart

1 Pleased to be presenting the latest results gathered by Woodpecker-Network volunteers on Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers and what we can do to conserve them better #BOUatEOU www.woodpecker-netwo...#BOUatEOU

Anyone got a video of a hare having the shit scared out of it by a curlew — ah, don’t worry, got one anyway!

Great work by @bramblebotanist.bsky.social as part of a project to begin unravelling the mystery of these enigmatic orchids in Britain

No mention of the disease risks. Or the welfare concerns of releasing birds into places that don’t suit them. This is pretend conservation, dressed up as the real thing and given a free ride by a serious environmental journalist. Hugely damaging. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Just recorded a Turtle Dove in a fenland bird survey, but no way of knowing if it’s a wild bird or one of these idiotic amateur releases. This really matters for conservation. Treating Turtle Doves like pheasants masks the decline. Maybe that’s the point... www.theguardian.com/environment/...

2025 was a record breeding season for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker nests monitored by our volunteers. None failed & where we were able to check the nest contents the number of chicks fledged was the highest since we started the project in 2015. Full story www.woodpecker-network.org.uk/index.php/ne...

Releasing captive bred Turtle Doves is at this stage highly inappropriate, as risks jeopardising the efforts to save the wild population due to potential disease risks from captive populations of uknown origin, as well as altering their migratory behaviour. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A great win, with national implications. At last, councils will have to take into account the cumulative effects of livestock factories on river catchments. It's all about increments of excrement. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Always nice to get the first Privet Hawk of the year! #moths

Fantastic news 19 Lesser Spotted Woodpecker nests found and being watched/monitored by our volunteers so far. Most have 4 chicks, well fed by the adults. Nests are so difficult to find & these are only a tiny proportion of the several thousand LSW pairs in Britain, but all very positive this year.

A fantastic 3 day birding in the south west looking for lesser spot nests happy to say I found nest number 17 this year!! A big thanks to @lesserspotnet.bsky.social and gus robin who came to image the nest showing possibly 3/4 young birds fantastic work these people are doing for the species 👏

LesserSpotNet volunteers have now found 16 active LSW nests - 2 more nests were found today. Young have now fledged at 3 nests - so get looking.

Not an overly rare moth, but Eyed Hawkmoth is one I've been waiting for since I first started trapping 5 years ago. Delighted to finally catch one in my Cambridgeshire garden! #moth #insect #lepioptera

Life update klaxon: I’ve joined the Natural Sciences department at Manchester Met as a PhD researcher! Our team will be investigating the role of interspecific competition and community composition in the decline of the willow tit, focusing our efforts on post-industrial sites in the north west.

Exciting news from Wyre Forest NNR, we looked into 2 Lesser Spotted Woodpecker nest cavities on 2 May with our endoscope. Female incubating 7 eggs in one (not all visible in photo) & 6 tiny chicks just hatched at 2nd nest. Both early so should do well. Thanks Natural England for showing us round.

The sounds of & sights of early summer seem to have erupted over the last few days. Cuckoos calling, Swifts overhead & of course thousands of St Mark's Flies filling countryside lanes & paths. So named as their emergence coincides with St Mark's Day on the 25th April #insects #flies #pollinators

Spent a few days in the Marches, and took a trip to walk through what was once ground zero of the UK Red Kite recovery programme...

HULK ADAM SMASHES DIRE WOLVES. Man alive this vexes me, and I am a bit sweary and irritable in this. Enjoy. arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

“De-extinction” is to biodiversity loss what “Mars colonization” is to climate change—wishful thinking that is at its core impossible but nevertheless sucks up attention and resources from actual solutions to these crises (which, ultimately, might be the whole point)

How do we save Britain's most elusive bird? It was great to help lead the first national workshop on Lesser spotted woodpecker last week, together with @lesserspotnet.bsky.social. The ultimate case of playing conservation on the "legendary" difficulty setting!

BTO decides not to return to Global Birdfair as an exhibitor. ‘BTO work has highlighted the impacts of climate change on birds, and because of our commitment to working sustainably, we no longer feel it is appropriate to take a stand at the event.’

Imagine a big industry that uses intensive farming to make non-essential garden 'leisure' products. Imagine those products had directly killed 6 million British songbirds, put some on the Red List, changed entire bird communities and polluted habitats. You'd think we might want to stop/limit that?

Willow Tits going, going, gone. This is one of those 'northern wetland' habitats that was hoped to be a refuge for Willow Tits 10 years ago. It isn't. They're vanishing from these habitats, too.

No less than eight Lesser Spots during this mornings visit to the Blean for the KOS survey, including a courting pair! Doesn’t get much better than that #kentbirding #ukbirding @lesserspotnet.bsky.social @kentishplover.bsky.social

Sunday book review: The Marsh Tit and Willow Tit by @richardkbroughton.bsky.social Review: markavery.info/2025/03/02/s... '... a very readable & clear account of what we know & don’t know'. #naturewriting #montanus #palustris #tits #mikado @chiffchat.bsky.social @hughbrazier.bsky.social

We've returned one of England’s rarest lichens to its historic home🏠 Scrambled Egg Lichen has been reintroduced to Norfolk from Cornwall via a trial translocation🍳 Thanks to Cornwall Wildlife Trust & Norfolk Wildlife Trust, with funding from Natural England Learn more 👉 bit.ly/4hWieOP

Excited to see how this goes. I helped the Plantlife team dig in the thalli…

Willow Tit declines now biting deep into northern wetland habitats/reserves, populations nosediving. Wet scrub isn't the stronghold or 'core habitat' touted in recent years. Once stranded on reserve 'islands' in an empty landscape, they can't last long. Needs restoration of less hostile landscape.

New in #BirdStudy Almost a third of UK Hawfinches visit birdfeeders/tables, with implications for disease risk. Investigating supplementary food use of UK Hawfinch Coccothraustes coccothraustes populations using DNA metabarcoding doi.org/10.1080/0006... #ornithology #ukbirding

Supplementary feeding is a threat to UK Hawfinch populations #Ornithology #UKBirding

Birdfair - a reputational risk #climatechange #globalbirdfair #lowcarbonbirding lowcarbonbirding.net/2025/02/05/b...

We are pleased to be working with Simon Gillings at BTO on this exciting project to use acoustic monitoring to help detect the presence of elusive Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers.

A little birdfeeding is fine, and valuable for some people (e.g. the immobile), but the size of the birdfood industry is so big, it's changing bird populations, spreading diseases, changing habitat chemistry, and swallowing up farmland, carbon & water to grow it. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

With news of yet another county extinction for Willow Tit (this time in Warwickshire) I'm prompted to offer some personal reflections on the effort to save Britain's "Turtle Dove of the North", and what is says about woodland bird #conservation as a whole... www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do...