"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead, American anthropologist, 1901-1978
Their numbers are plummeting in the UK – according to the RSPB, there’s been a 53% decline between 1995 and 2016.
The problem is that when buildings are refurbished or demolished, the nooks and crannies so vital for swifts are lost. This means that swifts have nowhere to nest. They need gaps high up on our homes and in other buildings.
So the RSPB has a goal. Swifts winter in Africa and make their way to the UK for the summer. To help swifts, it wants to get 1,000 swift nestboxes up before the swifts arrive at the end of April.
Put up a Swift nest box from the RSPB £39.99 Buy 2 nestboxes by 9 July 2019 and you can save £2 (applies to selected nest boxes. watch for the offer)
If you’re involved in a new build or renovation project, you can install a swift brick. For advice on bricks, email the RSPB’s conservation team at [email protected] and include 'swift bricks' in the subject line. Every swift brick counts.
Previously, they have undertaken a full puffin census every five years.
From 2019, however, they are going to count the puffins every year. The numbers tell the rangers if there’s been an increase or decrease in the colony – and that data is fed into national information to monitor trends and give an idea of how we can help puffins survive.
They will be checking to see if their holes have anyone in them or not. They’ll look for signs of puffin footprints and fresh digging, and count the puffins living inside the nests.
Puffins have traditionally done well on the Farne Islands. The National Trust has worked to protect them;there’s been good sources of food, a lack of ground predators and plenty of suitable nesting areas.
In May 2018, rangers had been worried that puffins had been hit by a long, harsh winter and poor food supplies. But on the Farne Islands, the birds have weathered a cold, stormy winter. Rangers counted 43,956 pairs of birds – a 9% increase from 2013!
This is an improvement – a 9% increase from 2013. Mind you, back in 2003, 55,674 pairs were recorded, so there’s still a way to go.
The puffins now face a challenge from increasing seal pup numbers (who went up from 1,704 to 2,602 in the last 5 years) – it means there’s less space for puffins on the outer islands.
The Farnes achieved their 25th anniversary of their National Nature Reserve status back in 2018. Such status has helped in several ways:
The provision of significant areas of nature habitats
Opening up additional finance for the protection of the islands
Providing resource for research and studies into protecting puffin numbers.
Monitoring the puffins every year will help the Trust track numbers against likely causes of population change – could changes be down to climate change, changes in the sand eel population or something else completely
Meantime, the puffin remains on the British Trust for Ornithology's red list for the UK, indicating concern for its future.
There’s a protected area currently covering 195,000 acres in southern Ecuador. However, if we all dig in and help with a donation, this area could be extended by about 74,000 acres.
This area is very important to a very rare Hummingbird species, the Blue-throated Hillstar. The species is only seen in the western Andes of southern Ecuador on a few remote mountaintops. Hillstars have adapted to live at high elevations in the Andes. The Blue-throated Hillstar’s range is small, restricted to the páramo (that’s alpine shrubland) habitat of a few mountains in the western Andes so this habitat is absolutely vital to their survival.
The habitat is also important to the Spectacled Bear, the Mountain Tapir and the Andean Condor.
So why is this appeal so urgent?
The area’s unique páramo habitat is under threat. Mining companies have the rights to mine key areas for metal deposits, which would most likely be extracted through open-pit mining – and that would be disastrous for local wildlife.
The area is threatened too by man-made fires lit by cattle ranchers. They light them to revive the grassland for pasture and encroachment from non-native pine trees from timber plantations next to them.
The land is owned by local communities who want to protect it because they rely on the clean freshwater in the mountain’s ecosystem. Locals have been working with the World Land Trust’s partner NCE and the Water National Secretariat (SENAGUA) to create one of Ecuador’s first Water Protection Areas. And that will give the ecosystem one of the highest legal categories of protection in the country AND provide water for nearly half a million Ecuadorian people.
As well as listing the ingredients to include, the blog helpfully includes things to avoid, and also the method of making your feeder.
As well as getting messy and making your own homemade bird feeder, you can then watch the visitors coming to your garden to enjoy the feast you've left them! Get the kids to see how many they can spot and identify - it's a great way to get them close to nature.
Also on the blog you'll find a way to turn used carton into seed holders.
Both sites provide suitable habitat for wintering water birds such as the lapwing, golden plover, brent geese. And they are an integral part of a continuous network of designated coastal habitats extending north from the Thames Estuary to the Colne Estuary.
The East coast used to be full of vibrant wildlife but human claims for agriculture, together with the forces of nature (coastal erosion and rising sea levels) have taken their toll.
The new status of both sites have recognised the importance of new mudflats and saltmarsh to offset the losses over the last 400 years.
The Government sees this protection as a vital way to achieve their 25 year Environmental Plan, and the thing about protecting the aforesaid area is that it is next to the RSPB’s Wallasea Island Wild Coast project.
The RSPB is working with partners such as Defra and the Environment Agency to create more coastal habitat for people and nature.
Approximately 95 per cent of the area of our Sites of Special Scientific Interest and about 60 per cent of the total area of our most important or ‘priority’ wildlife habitats is now in good condition for wildlife or has management in place to restore its condition.
The Dee Estuary is bursting with wildlife, including hosting avocets, egrets, harriers, noisy redshanks, swallows and swifts.
Since 2011 the RSPB has established management on approximately 130,000 hectares of land to create new wildlife-rich habitat in the wider countryside.
