Source: Positive News
This year the annual UK bittern survey recorded another increase, reports Simon Wotton from the RSPB. Encouragingly, nesting attempts are at their highest level since monitoring began in 1994
Back from the brink. Again.
Known in different parts of the UK as bog blutter, bumbagus or myre-dromble, among other names, bitterns are an elusive species.
More often heard than seen, territorial males make a remarkable booming sound in spring.Bitterns once bred in all four UK countries. George Montagu, writing in the Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds in 1831, stated that in Scotland “the sound of the bittern is so very common that every child is familiar with it, though the birds, from being shy, are not often seen.” However, by the 1880s bitterns were considered extinct as a breeding species in the UK.
Following recolonisation early in the 20th century, initially in the Norfolk Broads, numbers increased to a peak of about 80 booming males in the 1950s – most still in the Broads. There followed a steady decline, leading to a programme of monitoring and research from the late 1980s.
This aimed to accurately determine numbers at the few sites where bitterns clung on into the 1980s, diagnose the causes of decline and identify a means of halting and then reversing it.
In 1990, annual surveys were established. These used a new method combining mapping the territories of booming males using triangulation and then identifying them by the characteristics of their booming songs.
Numbers continued to fall…
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