The success of the avocet as a breeding bird in the UK goes hand in glove with the growth of the RSPB as a conservation organisation. On the weekend of the charity’s Annual General Meeting, it has been revealed that our emblem the avocet, once extinct as a breeding bird here, has enjoyed a record breaking year across RSPB reserves. Nature reserves are only part of our programme but such an important part; with key roles of dedicating space for nature, saving species, helping restore large scale natural systems and connecting people to nature.
Avocets returned to breed at RSPB Minsmere in 1947 after an absence of more than 100 years and numbers have continued to grow across the UK. RSPB reserves have played a vital part in this population increase, with 50% of the UK’s avocets choosing them as their home thanks to habitat management techniques. Here at Frampton Marsh, due to dynamic management work by our wardening team, including the creation of small “nursery pools” on the wet grassland, we’ve welcomed our best avocet year ever. These pools are ideal places for chicks to feed, offering safety from predators. Lots of healthy chicks in family groups were clear indicators of Frampton’s bumper year and this year’s record 81 pairs are testimony to the quality of the work that we’ve been doing here to help the avocet and other wildlife species. (There were no breeding avocets here prior to 2009!) Our success here underlines the fact that we can save nature, if we understand and address the threats it is facing.
With winter approaching, our avocets have dispersed to join winter colonies in estuaries and on the coast further south and about 7,500 will winter in the UK. An astonishing 40% of these birds can be found around Poole Harbour in Dorset, making it the most important British wintering site.
Pioneering science, saving species from the brink and working with landowners and businesses are among the RSPB’s successes in the last 12 months. Other notable achievements, which are being celebrated at this weekend’s AGM include the RSPB’s partnership with Crossrail in beaching the seawall at Wallasea Island in Essex, and tracking the migration route of a turtle dove for the first time. If you tweet, follow the AGM at #RSPBAGM.
What we’re doing on a big scale on our nature reserves can be recreated by you on a smaller scale in your own gardens and green spaces. Don’t forget that collectively this adds up to one staggeringly huge nature reserve! Find out more at: www.rspb.org.uk/givenatureahome
Here at Frampton this afternoon, three important visitors were present. The first was the Eastern England Reserves Manager with his father. (I hope we passed muster Jon?) The second was an avocet right in front of the visitor centre. However, I’m sure Jon won’t mind me saying that the third was, in my view, the most important - the cutest, tiny tot with her mother and father from London and grandmother from nearby Sleaford, saying moo to the cows and looking at the “birdies” through the window: different families of very wide-ranging ages all doing one thing – connecting with nature; all here for one reason...because the RSPB is managing Frampton Marsh as a nature reserve.
Murray Brown
Visitor Experience Intern
photo by Neil Smith