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Bispham Marsh BioBlitz
To attend a BioBlitz at Bispham Marsh on Sunday 3rd June please contact
Pauline Taylor
(North Blackpool Pond Trail Community Development Officer) on
01253-622222 or 07810-123988. Anything from a single
one hour stint would be useful to promote the site and local interest.
Temporary closure of Fylde Bird Club
Hide at Marton Mere
A pair of Blackbirds are currently nesting in the Fylde Bird Club
Hide at Marton Mere. The hide has been locked until further notice.
Fylde Pelagics 2012
Monday 27th August 15.10-20.10.
Tuesday 11th September 15.10-20.10.
Meet at Fleetwood Beach by the RNLI shop. Access directly off beach by
steep ladder or plank.
Cost £26. Payment in advance essential with full refund if the trip has
to be cancelled due to bad weather.
To Book E-mail
Paul Slade or telephone
07970-986904.
Click here
to read about the history of Fylde Pelagics.
North West Black Headed Gull Study
Click
here to download a newsletter detailing the colour ringing of
Black-headed Gulls in the North-west of England.
Restoration of native woodland at
Humblescough Farm
Funds raised during the
Solitary Sandpiper twitch as Humblescough Farm, Nateby have been
used to restore the native woodland bordering the flood. Future
conservation work planned to take place at the farm includes the
creation of fen grassland and the installation of nestboxes to
supplement the boxes already situated around the farm.
Changes Coming to The Fylde Bird Club’s
Website Sightings Page
The Bird Club’s self service Sightings Page, which was introduced last
year, has been a successful and essential improvement to the Club’s
Website. Now the Committee have agreed to incorporate some further
enhancements to the Sightings Page that will make its use much easier
for all concerned.
Drop Down Lists
The major changes will be to the entry fields for Species and Locations.
In both cases when the user begins to type a Species or Location name,
the computer will offer a ‘Drop Down List’ matching the letters typed.
For example typing ‘bl’ in the species field will produce a Drop Down
List of birds starting with ‘Bl’, i.e. Blackbird; Blackcap; Black-tailed
Godwit; etc. The user will then ‘click’ on the Species they wish to
report and it will be entered into the Species field. The same process
will apply to the Locations field.
Review Screen
Currently if a user makes a mistake and submits their sightings, they
cannot undo it and must e-mail the administrator to get it corrected. In
the future when the user selects ‘Submit’ the computer will display a
preview of the sightings entered and ask the user to confirm that they
are correct. If the user selects ‘Yes’ they will be published, if the
user selects ‘No’ they will be returned to the input page, where they
can correct their entries before submitting again.
Request to Contributors
Please do not type ‘ditto’, ‘as above’ or use “” marks to indicate the
notes for the record above also apply. Please repeat the notes by using
select, cut and paste. This is because when turned into a spreadsheet,
the records will be ordered by species and “as above” will no longer
mean anything.
Why are we doing this?
The main reason for making these changes is to simplify the
incorporation of submitted sightings to records stored in the Club’s
electronic database. This database provides the raw material from which
the Annual Bird Reports are produced and stands as a valuable reference
of all birds recorded in our area. All sightings entered into the
Sightings Page are added to the database but first, someone has to
expend considerable work tidying up the entries.
For the database to work all the Species and Location names must be
standardised. For example: to a computer a Red-throated Diver is not the
same species as a Red throated Loon or a R.T. Diver or a Rd th Diver.
The same principle applies to Location names. The introduction of ‘Drop
Down Lists' will enforce the use of standardised names and save an
enormous amount of work.
The preview feature will allow mistakes to be corrected before
publishing and again save work further down the line.
These features will also simplify the process of submitting sightings by
reducing the amount of typing required by contributors.
Tougher measures needed to stamp out
bird of prey persecution
The RSPB has recently been calling for Vicarious Liability to be
introduced into England, whereby landowners/employers who encourage or
allow their staff to undertake bird of prey persecution can themselves
be prosecuted – so not just the gamekeeper gets done, but his landowning
boss gets done as well.
This measure is available to prosecutors in Scotland, but not yet in
England.
Sadly, spectacular birds of prey like red kites, hen harriers,
peregrines and golden eagles are still illegally and selfishly
persecuted by some people - they shoot, poison and trap our birds of
prey.
An independent e-petition has recently been posted on the UK govt
website, calling for Vicarious Liability in England – the RSPB is
supporting this e-petition as part of our campaigning on this issue.
If you agree, please take a few moments to sign up.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/23089
Marton Mere Work Party September 2011
On 25th September Fylde Bird Club members joined a work party at
Marton Mere to improve the habitat for wildlife and viewing conditions
for the birders. Fylde Bird Club would like to thank all those who came
along and gave up their time to help enhance the habitat at the Fylde's
premier birding location.
Before the work party
After the work party
Hare Coursing on Newton Marsh
After a number of recent hare coursing incidents at Newton and
Freckleton Marsh over the last few months, RSPB have met with the
Lancashire police, and they are looking to escalate their response to
this situation.
To ensure they can do this effectively, we need to support the police by
reporting all incidents, so they can see the scale of the problem, and
also respond to individual incidents appropriately.
If you are at Newton or Freckleton Marsh, and you see hare coursing
taking place, then please:
· Record exactly what you see – number/description of people/dogs
involved, what they are doing, wildlife disturbed/killed, vehicles
involved (make and registration number), and the location of this
activity (the police will ask for a postcode; the postcode for the
SITA waste plant adjacent to Newton Marsh is PR4 0XE).
· Report it to the police on 0845 1 25 35 45 and request a police
response (telephone 101 from Nov onwards)
· Get a police log number for the incident.
· We do not advise approaching or challenging people involved in hare
coursing.
It is worth noting that hare coursing is a problem for several reasons -
hunting with dogs is illegal, disturbance to wintering birds has an
impact on the designated features of the SSSI, during the breeding
season it disturbs Schedule 1 birds (black-tailed godwits), and it could
potentially damage the new and expensive electric fence that helps
protect breeding birds on the marsh from predation. Furthermore, it
leaves the local community feeling very threatened and intimidated.
Andrew Gouldstone
RSPB Area Conservation Manager
Cheshire, Merseyside, Grt Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria.
Free sample copy of British Birds - Exclusive to Bird Club members
To claim your free sample visit
www.britishbirds.co.uk/freesample.
British Birds publishes ground-breaking articles on Identification,
Distribution, Migration, Conservation and Taxonomy. It is THE place to
report significant ornithological sightings and events and also features
detailed news and comment from the UK and beyond, a summary of recent
sightings and new book releases appraised critically by a birding
expert, with discounts available to subscribers via the BB Bookshop.
British Birds is an invaluable resource for birders and professional
ornithologists – you can’t afford NOT to read it!
Freckleton Marsh - habitat
restoration for breeding waders
Following on from habitat works on
Newton Marsh over the last few years, further work has now been
completed on the adjacent Freckleton Marsh.
In August this year, the RSPB rotary ditcher, a large ditch excavating
machine, was used on Freckleton Marsh to create 5.3km of shallow, linear
ditches, that will create excellent wader feeding habitat. These largely
follow the old saltmarsh ditch system that was still evident on the
marsh surface. These new ditches are typically about 3m wide, but only
half a metre deep. Water levels in these ditches will depend on direct
rainfall, but to help, a series of 10 earth bunds have been installed in
strategic locations on some of these ditches, to help them hold water
for longer. These bunds have a simple pipe arrangement through them,
that will allow a degree of control over the water levels. Only
installed in November, these bunds are already working, and the ditch
system across the marsh is holding water well.
In combination with Newton Marsh, this now represents 130ha of improved
wet grassland management. Hopefully, breeding wader numbers on
Freckleton Marsh will respond next year to this new management.
We are very grateful to the Freckleton and Newton Marsh Owners for
undertaking this management.
The acquisition of the RSPB rotary ditcher was part funded by the
Heritage Lottery Fund, and it is operated on behalf of the RSPB by RC
Baker agricultural contractors.
Management on both Newton Marsh and Freckleton Marsh is funded under
Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship scheme.
Seumus Eaves,
Lancashire FWAG, and Andrew Gouldstone, RSPB.
Marinelife Cetacean and Seabird Surveys
in the North Irish Sea
Marinelife are introducing a new survey route across the Irish Sea in
collaboration with Stena Line, from Fleetwood to Larne, on a monthly
basis.
We operate other monthly surveys from Portsmouth to Bilbao, Poole to
Santander, Plymouth to Roscoff and Felixstowe to Vlaardingen (Holland).
Our survey teams are volunteers from many backgrounds, but they do need
to have some experience of cetacean and/or seabird observation and
recording, preferably at sea though coast-based work is acceptable.
Download information
here,
here and
here
Lancashire and Cheshire Fauna Society
Publications
Are you missing any back numbers of the Lancashire Bird Report? Those of
you who are members of the Lancashire and Cheshire Fauna Society should
already have received an email from Dave Bickerton mentioning that he
has spare copies of several of these plus other society publications.
Please visit www.lacfs.org.uk
and click on 'publications' for a complete list. Members of the
society can get back numbers of reports free on a 'first come first
served' basis, in return for postage and hopefully a donation. If you
are not a member then please contact Dave via the link on the L&CFS
website to see if what you want is available, though you will have to
pay. On the other hand, this could be a golden opportunity to join -
only £10 per annum including a copy of the Lancashire Bird Report each
year.
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