Springwatch British Wildlife: Accompanies the BBC 2 TV series. Stephen Moss
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and peregrine, barn owls were also badly hit by the indiscriminate use of agricultural pesticides such as DDT in the post-war farming boom. The final problem these beautiful birds face is the danger from traffic: they fly so low when hunting that they are especially vulnerable to being hit by cars or lorries, and their corpses can often be seen along major roads, especially in their stronghold of EastAnglia.
With all these hazards, it might seem surprising that barn owls are actually doing reasonably well at the moment. This is partly because farmers and conservationists have joined forces to put up nest boxes in their barns and other farm buildings, which the barn owls take to readily.
Barn owls have a unique breeding strategy, to help them cope with the unpredictability of the weather and their intermittent food supply. Since they cannot predict how much food they will be able to bring back for their chicks, they begin incubating as soon as the first egg is laid, which means that the youngsters vary considerably in size and strength. In a good year, as many as six chicks may be raised to fledging, but in a bad year all but one may die. In a grisly twist to this, the oldest chicks will sometimes eat their younger siblings.
When breeding, the parent birds maximise their chances of finding food by using their extraordinarily sensitive hearing: their heart-shape face pattern and slightly asymmetrical ears enable them to focus the sound coming from an unsuspecting vole, and also to pinpoint its exact location. Once they have zeroed in on this, they drop down to the ground to grab the prey in their razor-sharp talons.
Like other owls, the barn owl has attracted its fair share of folklore. Its bizarre, screeching call, which has given it the alternative name of ‘screech owl’, may be uttered from spooky castle towers or battlements. This, combined with the barn owl’s snow-white plumage, is surely responsible for at least some of the many ghost stories associated with these ancient locations.
©Phil McLean/FLPA
©Tony Hamblin/FLPA
The wood pigeon and collared dove are two of our commonest garden birds, regularly coming to feed on bird tables.
The monotonous but soothing sounds of cooing – whether the familiar five notes of the wood pigeon or the three notes of the collared dove – are among the classic sounds of the British summer. It is often said that the wood pigeon is giving instructions to its listener: ‘Take two cows, Taf-fy…’ or ‘My toe is bleeding…’, in each case with the emphasis on the middle syllable. The collared dove is, if anything, even more monotonous: ‘I’m so bored…’ is one suggested mnemonic. Others think that the bird is giving unenthusiastic support to its favourite football team: ‘U-ni-ted, U-ni-ted.…’
In recent years, both these familiar birds have been doing very well, frequently appearing in the top ten of the most common and widespread garden birds. And yet they could hardly have two more different stories of success.
The wood pigeon is still essentially a farmland bird, often seen in vast numbers as they gather to feed on grain, and are then shot by irate farmers. But although still common in the countryside, in recent years the wood pigeon has moved into our towns and cities, and is now a very common sight in suburban gardens. Large and stout, it is easily told apart from other pigeons and doves by the thick white band around its neck. In flight, it has another obvious field mark: a broad white stripe down the centre of each wing.
The collared dove is another familiar fixture as a British garden bird, found in virtually the whole of the country, apart from the extreme north and west. Yet little over half a century ago, it was virtually unknown in Britain. Its extraordinary spread westwards across Europe began in the early twentieth century, and by the early 1950s it had hopped across the North Sea and gained a toehold here. The very first pair bred in Norfolk during the mid-1950s – some of today’s birders recall going there specially to see them! Yet, twenty years later, it was a common bird in villages and towns across the country. Smaller and more pinkish-brown in colour than most other pigeons and doves, it also sports the neat black collar that gives the species its name.
The feral, town or London pigeon is regarded far less affectionately than either of these two. Its origins, however, are bizarre. Its ancestor, the rock dove, lives only on wild and rocky cliffs around the coast, and is the last bird you would have expected to colonise our urban jungles. The story began centuries ago, when our ancestors domesticated these birds for food and feathers. Later, some escaped and went feral. During the past century, others escaped or got lost when on races – despite their extraordinary navigational ability, racing pigeons don’t always get home. For years, the most famous population of feral pigeons lived in London’s Trafalgar Square, until visitors were banned from feeding them because of fears of disease. Today, they have another problem to contend with: peregrines, the pigeon’s main predator, have moved into many of our city centres.
A fourth resident species, the stock dove, is one of the most overlooked of all our common birds, perhaps because it resembles a smaller version of the wood pigeon, without the white collar. Close-up it is rather attractive, with a greenish-purple patch on its neck, rather like the sheen caused by a thin film of oil.
A fifth species, the turtle dove, is the odd one out, being the only British member of its family to migrate to Africa. Sadly, turtle doves are far less common than they used to be. As with so many of our farmland birds, this is partly because of modern farming methods, but it is also because thousands are shot and killed as they pass through the Mediterranean region each spring and autumn. By the way, the name ‘turtle’ has nothing to do with reptiles, but is a corruption of the bird’s purring call, which sounds like a soft ‘tur-tur, tur-tur.…’
©David Tipling/FLPA
©Erica Olsen/FLPA
The feral pigeon and stock dove are superficially similar, but generally live in different habitats.
©Neil Bowman/FLPA
The turtle dove is one of our most rapidly declining farmland birds, due to problems at home and abroad.
©Harry Fiolet/FN/Minden/FLPA
The nightjar’s plumage is an extraordinary mixture of greys, browns and buffs, designed to camouflage the bird.
The cuckoo and the nightjar have a lot in common. Both are summer visitors here from Africa, and both are long-winged, slender birds, easily mistaken for a hawk or falcon, especially if you get only a fleeting view. They are also birds that are heard far more often than they are seen.
The call of the cuckoo is, of course, one of the best known of all Britain’s birds, though the species’ decline in recent years does mean that fewer and fewer people now hear them each spring. The days when observers vied with each other to report the first cuckoo in the letters pages of The Times are long gone. Nowadays, to hear a cuckoo call at all is something of an event.
The reasons behind the cuckoo’s rapid decline are complex, but it does appear that factors at home and abroad are involved. Here, the decline of large moths means the caterpillars on which cuckoo chicks are fed by their foster parents are far less readily available. And on the cuckoo’s wintering grounds in Africa, drought and habitat loss are adding to the bird’s problems.
Cuckoos still arrive in Britain from mid-April onwards; the date was once commemorated around the country by ‘Cuckoo Fairs’ held around this time of year to welcome back the bird.
In some ways, it is rather