This is Michael Walter's latest report on the Reserve:
Amid the carnage in Paris and the excesses of Christmas, the publication of Birds of Conservation Concern 4 last month may well have passed you by. This survey, produced at roughly six-yearly intervals by a group of seven conservation organisations that includes the RSPB and National Trust, uses the traffic light system to highlight the status of many UK species. The Green List contains species whose status has remained healthy or improved since the previous audit, Amber birds have suffered a limited decline, and Red List species are in more serious trouble. The criteria used for assessment vary from species to species, but Amber birds are generally those that have suffered a decline of at least 25% in either range or population since 1969, while Red-listed species have decreased by at least 50% in range or numbers over the same period. Several Blean species are categorised as threatened, with lesser spotted woodpecker, turtle dove, cuckoo, marsh tit, song thrush, spotted flycatcher, tree pipit and linnet all on the Red list. Nightjar and tawny owl are on the less critical Amber list but, worryingly, have just been moved to it from the safe Green list. However, of greatest concern is the raising of the threat level for nightingale and woodcock from Amber to Red.
Blean Woods are famous for the numbers of nightingales to be heard each spring but, against a background of a nationally declining population, it has been a struggle to maintain 30-45 pairs on the reserve. Numbers have declined a little since the 1980s, when 40-60 pairs was the norm, and it has been possible to stabilise the population only through an intensive annual programme of coppicing, carried out by a combination of contractors and volunteers. But it is the regrading of woodcock that is a real shock. For as long as I’ve been interested in birds, the woodcock is a species that I’ve associated with pretty much any area of woodland, coniferous, deciduous or mixed, but not any more. Across the UK its distribution has become far more patchy, while in Kent it now exists only in small isolated pockets during the breeding season. Lost from numerous sites in the west of the county, and from much of the Stour valley, it is now more or less confined to a few woods around Sevenoaks, Bedgebury Forest and the Blean (the collective term for all the large blocks of woodland surrounding Canterbury). In the recently published Kent Breeding Bird Atlas the county population is estimated at 30-50 males, compared to 100-300 in 1988-94. Back in the 1980s birdwatchers travelled considerable distances to tick off redstart and wood warbler at Blean Woods (sadly both long since consigned to the ornithological dustbin). Increasingly, people are now making the pilgrimage to the reserve to see woodcock and willow warbler, another bird that has declined massively in Kent. While the reserve welcomes all who come to see its birds, it is a sad indictment of the nation’s wildlife management that the species on which these birdwatchers are training their binoculars were widespread in Kentwithin recent memory.In the case of the woodcock, it may well be that warmer, drier summers are reducing the number of woods that are damp enough during the critical breeding months.
Since I came to Canterbury in 1982, the mean minimum overnight temperatures I have recorded in December have almost invariably lain between 2 and 4°C, but last month the figure was 8°, making it far and away the mildest end to the year in 33 years. The results are to be seen all around us: in our gardens clumps of flowering daffodils vie with snowdrops, winter aconites and crocuses, while in the wood hazel catkins can be found in full dangly bloom and swards of bluebell foliage, their sword-like leaves up to 5” tall, are to be found everywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if careful searching didn’t reveal a few bluebells flowering shyly in January.
Below is a photo of a woodcock taken by Dave Smith: