Introduction
As the Christmas day moves ever closer and the days get shorter and colder, I often find myself slipping into a reflective mood, thinking of all the ups and downs of another year coming to its end. So, the perfect time to review another great year (with a few challenges) on the marsh here at Titchwell.
Winter habitat management (Jan-March 2023)
For the reserve team, the year began, as it always does, up to our ears in habitat management work, with the aim of getting every part of the reserve in the best condition possible for the upcoming breeding season. This year was a mix of “business as usual” tasks (reedcutting at Patsy’s, willow scrub removal in the reedbed, coppicing in the woodland etc) plus some exciting new jobs. One of the biggest of these was to clear the vegetation off every island on the freshmarsh, including the 12 new islands created in the fantastic Life on the Edge-funded improvements to both the freshmarsh and reedbed, for the first time. These islands greatly increased the amount of suitable ground available for a wide variety of ground nesting birds – the reserve-record of 97 pairs of breeding avocet in the 2022 breeding season is a testament to this. However, more ground means more work for the team, and it was a serious undertaking involving getting a new boat to access the remote islands. After a solid few days cutting, burning and floating around the marsh, the islands where bare once again. However, due to a low point in the newly created bunds (that divide the freshmarsh into three smaller compartments), the islands were not able to be flooded as normal (which helps kill the remaining vegetation and keep the islands bare for more of the breeding season). The low point is due to be fixed early 2024.
Cutting islands on freshmarsh (Ryan Doggart)
Another exciting job was continuing our mission to make the reserve more enticing for breeding Spoonbills. With the UK (and Norfolk) breeding population ever increasing, along with the number of Spoonbill using the reserve for roosting and feeding increasing as well, ensuring we have the right habitats to tempt these amazing waterbirds to breed here is key in making sure the reserve continues to deliver for nature well into the future. In the UK, most Spoonbill nest in isolated woodlands and sheltered wooded islands in already established colonies of Cormorants and herons (Grey Heron, Little Egret), which we don’t currently have on the reserve. So, instead of making habitat specifically for spoonbill, we are actually targeting breeding herons and Cormorants, which in turn could attract Spoonbills. We are doing this in two ways – firstly a series of sheltered islands were made in a quiet corner of the reedbed (as part of the Life on the Edge habitat work in 2021), which were planted with a small number of trees in winter 21/22. This year we did the “big plant” of 1107 whips of Grey Willow, Goat Willow, Hawthorn and Oak – a mammoth undertaking! The aim is to create a series of wooded, sheltered islands that will be attractive to Cormorants (then Spoonbills), but patience is definitely going to be required – the trees will take 15-20 years before they are likely to be suitable for either species. That seems a very long time away, so in the meantime we are also trying to make our area of woodland in the eastern part of the reserve (called Willow Wood) more enticing for Spoonbill. To do this, we are trying to establish a breeding colony of herons. Little Egrets use the area already as a roost site in Autumn and Winter with a Great White Egret sometimes joining them, so we know herons like the area. We chose a “fake it till you make it” approach which involved making the area look like it already was a heron breeding area – both Grey Herons and Little Egrets are often colonial nesters and commonly use well-established breeding areas, so making it look like an in-use colony could be enough to get the first pairs to settle. So, we made some fake heron nests out of willow brash from the scrub removal in the reedbed – they are quite something and measure over a meter in diameter! These where then hoisted up into the canopy of the trees (which was quite an operation) and to make sure they looked well used, they where then covered (very artistically) in whitewash as our fake bird poo – herons are notoriously messy at their nests! Finally, to compliment this we moved the Autumn Trail barrier further west towards Patsy’s screen (trail open August-October), to greatly cut down the amount of human disturbance in the area. An RSPB study has shown that Grey Herons can be disturbed by a human up to 250m away! So, giving them a comfortable buffer from the busy parts of our reserve is essential if we want these characterful birds to breed. Thank you to everyone for being so understanding.
Heron nest ready to be put in position (Ryan Doggart)
One of my favourite parts of the reserve is the fantastic fen meadow on Meadow Trail – one of the most botanically rich areas and in the summer, it brims with the delicate pink flowers of Ragged Robin, the white sprays of Fen Bedstraw and the rich purple spikes of Southern Marsh Orchid. However, over the past decade or so, the number of Southern Marsh Orchid flowers has been decreasing – so work is needed to try and reverse these declines. One theory on the cause of the reducing numbers was that the mat of low surface vegetation was becoming too thick for the orchids to break through – as they are often found on disturbed ground. To test this, we hired in a heavy-duty rotovator and created three strips of disturbed ground, leaving some of the meadow untouched, to allow us to do comparisons later in the year.
Rotovating strips into Fen Meadow (Ryan Doggart)
We returned a few months later in mid-Spring to count the number of rosettes (the base leaves of an orchid, with one rosette for each individual plant) and compare the number between the rotovated ground and the untouched areas. What we found was many hundreds of rosettes spread across the whole meadow, with no obvious difference between the two areas – very healthy numbers indeed! However, a walk through the meadow a few weeks later revealed the potential cause of the declines – we found a number of flowering spikes grazed completely to the ground. An early morning stake-out the next day revealed the culprit, as I watched a grazing Muntjac move from orchid flower to orchid flower, ignoring every other plant – orchids must be tasty! We plan to continue this work in early 2024, rotovating the same strips again, as orchids are incredibly complex and management changes can take several years to have an effect. Alongside this, we are planning on erecting an electric fence around some of the meadow in an effort to reduce the amount of grazing from Muntjac.
Southern Marsh Orchid (Lance Fisher)
Breeding season (April – August)
Every breeding season at any reserve is a real rollercoaster of ups and downs, winners and losers, and this year at Titchwell was no exception. Overall, it was another good season both in terms of numbers and fledging success, with the Life on the Edge freshwater habitat works continuing to bring lots of benefits to our breeding birds, along with a challenge or two. Below, is a summary for the main species across the reserve.
Reedbed
Bittern
There was a pair present within the reedbed from late winter, with at least one bird often feeding in the fish-rich borrow pits beside the West Bank Path, giving fantastic views. A male began “booming” (the loud, eery display call that the males use to hold territory and attract a mate) in mid-spring and continued throughout the breeding season. It is suspected that it was the same male as last season, identified through it’s strange higher-pitched booming (nothing at Titchwell is ever totally normal!). Despite the booming continuing, no feeding flights where observed all season which means there was likely no successful nesting attempt this year.
Bittern (Phil Gwilliam)
Marsh Harrier
After having relatively low numbers of Marsh Harriers roosting on the reserve over winter (peak count of 22 out of roost in Jan 23), it was great to see most of the regular birds begin to set up territories in February. Any bright, clear day in late Winter/early Spring the air was full of noisy and acrobatic males doing their dazzling “skydancing” displays. Overall, there was 4 nests on the reserve, fledging 7 young, plus another nest just west of the reserve boundary which fledged 1.
Male Marsh Harrier with nesting material (Phil Gwilliam)
Bearded Tits
Finding out the total number of Bearded Tits across the whole reserve is an almost impossible task – so here at Titchwell we survey a number of set survey areas, repeating the same areas each year. This gives us a sample which we can use to find trends in the number of birds and gives us a good indication of how the birds are doing across the whole reedbed. This year there were 11 pairs in the survey areas, which is the highest count since 2017. Fledging success was also very high, with almost every pair within the survey areas seen with fledged young. Later in the Autumn, several large groups where often seen (and heard!) pinging their way through the reeds – always a delight to see on a still, sunny day.
Male Bearded Tit (Cliff Gilbert)
Reedbed Health Check
As you may already know, as of Winter 23/24 we are starting to manage parts of our reedbed in a very different way (For details, see our blog post – https://community.rspb.org.uk/placestovisit/titchwellmarsh/b/titchwellmarsh-blog/posts/exciting-times-ahead-for-the-titchwell-marsh-reedbed), moving to a longer-term and much larger-scale form of management, known as reedbed rejuvenation. Before this work begins, it is important to know how species that get surveyed less regularly are doing, so we can monitor the effects the new management has on those that live in our reedbed.
Firstly, we surveyed the entire reedbed for our more common reedbed-breeding birds (Reed, Sedge and Cetti’s Warblers, plus Reed Buntings). This involved walking throughout the reedbed, recording and mapping every singing male. These counts revealed very healthy numbers of all species, compared to the last full survey in 2017. Most notably a huge increase in Cetti’s Warblers, from 11 (which was the previous reserve record high count) to 24 singing males – their bright, sunny song coming from every corner of the reedbed! Reed warbler numbers had also increased from 17 in 2017 to 30 this year.
Moths are an important indicator of any habitat’s health and reedbeds are no exception. So as part of the health check we carried out 5 trapping sessions in two very different reedbed compartments. The first was in Reedbed Pool, which is a very wet area with relatively little reed litter; the second was in Patsy’s Reedbed, a much dryer area, with older stands of reed and a deep litter layer. The results from the trapping where very positive, with lots of highlights including the first reserve record of Brachmia inornatella (a tiny reedbed specialist) and healthy numbers of reedbed moths including a Norfolk record trap count of 47 Obscure Wainscot. The trapping also revealed the importance of having some drier, older areas of reed as the traps in Patsy’s Reedbed had both higher numbers of moths (3x greater total than Reedbed Pool!) and greater diversity. Confirmation to us on how important it will be to safeguard these areas in the future. A big thanks to Andy Culshaw for doing the trapping!
Finally, we undertook a Water Vole survey in May, which involves scouring along set lines (transects) through the reedbed in search for signs of this often-secretive little creature. These are feeding platforms, latrines (piles of poo used to mark territories) and burrows. We found signs of Water Voles widely throughout the reedbed, which was great to see (and even heard a few plops as a vole entered the water ahead of us). The number of signs found indicated a slight increase in activity since the last survey in 2018.
Water Vole (Cliff Gilbert)
Freshmarsh
Avocet
The high numbers of nesting pairs continued from last year’s record season, with only a relatively small decrease in nests, from 97 to 70, the avocet obviously still benefitting from increased number of breeding islands following Life on the Edge work in 2021. This is despite a large amount of vegetation on breeding islands (especially later in season), meaning the later nesting birds (who love open bare ground) where forced to the edges of the breeding islands away from the vegetation. This resulted from not being able to flood out islands over winter due to the main outlet pipes failing. Issues due to be fixed Winter 23/24. Unfortunately, the number of fledged young this year was greatly reduced, with only 10 young surviving till fledging. This was due to a lot of Black-headed Gulls (who had one of their best years ever on the reserve – more on this in a bit!) predating any newly hatched chicks, especially later in the season. We have plans cooking for future ways to give the Avocet some more space, so stay tuned.
Avocet brooding chicks (Phil Gwilliam)
Black-headed and Mediterranean Gulls
As mentioned above, Black-headed Gulls had a great year with 659 nesting pairs, fledging a huge 500+ young – which is the second highest count of nesting pairs in modern history at Titchwell. The fledging success was especially pleasing given the context of the species getting hit extremely hard by the latest outbreak of bird flu (HPAI) across much of the European population. In terms of the disease’s impact on our breeding colony, it was thankfully very minor with only a small number of dead adults seen throughout the season - however, these birds were not tested so bird flu was not confirmed as the cause but is very likely.
In amongst the chaotic energy of the Black-headed Gull colony, it was great to have 7 pairs of Mediterranean Gulls nest, fledging 5 young. Great to see after a few years with none breeding on the reserve.
Waders and terns
Any visitors to Parrinder Hide in late Spring or early Summer might have been lucky enough to spot several nesting waders amongst the great array of passage birds using the freshmarsh before continuing their journeys. A pair of Ringed Plover nested on the large island in the Eastern compartment for the second year in a row, giving great views and later fledged 1 young. 2 pairs of Little Ringed Plover nested in the Western compartment, again giving good views from the hide. One pair unfortunately nested in the bottom of a hollow, which sadly filled with water on a stormy day flooding out the nest. The other pair hatched 2 chicks which was fantastic to see the young scurrying around the reedy edge of the marsh, though unfortunately they disappeared overnight before they where fully fledged, likely getting predated but it will remain a mystery.. A couple of pairs of Oystercatcher nested amongst the gulls across the freshmarsh, but unfortunately suffered heavily from predation from those same gulls – they had a lot of mouths to feed this year!
The number of Common Terns nesting on the reserve increased from last year, from 6 to 8 pairs and are continuing to take advantage of the new breeding islands from the Life on the Edge project. Due to the dense vegetation on the islands late in the season, counting the nests and fledged young was tricky, but at least 4 fledged young where seen.
Common Tern returning with a fish (Cliff Gilbert)
Beach
Ringed Plover
Titchwell beach is continuously changing and in recent years has been suffering from lots of erosion and the beach profile is getting flatter, lower and the substrate sandier, meaning less area suitable for beach-nesting birds. In response, several pairs of Ringed Plover now nest in secluded and sheltered areas around the dunes. In total, 7 pairs nested on the beach (within protective cordons) or in the dunes, fledging 6 young. Of the unsuccessful nests, the majority were lost in the extended stormy period in early summer with the constant strong North-easterly winds causing lots of sand-blow and higher tides.
Ringed plover (Cliff Gilbert)
Moth Mornings
The Titchwell institution that is our Wednesday moth mornings continued this year and it was another great season both in terms of numbers of moths and the number of visitors enjoying the nights catch. A whopping total of 6721 moths of 413 species where recorded, including a staggering 33 new species for the reserve! A big thank you to our volunteers Roger, John and Julie for running this!
Eyed Hawkmoth (Phil Gwilliam)
Migration and non-breeding birds
Titchwell is not only a haven for breeding birds, but also a vital pitstop for a whole host of birds migrating to and from their breeding grounds, as well as a safe place to feed and roost over winter. One of the most exciting parts of a visit to Titchwell at any time of year is the wonder of what could possibly turn up, with the great variety of habitats across the reserve and our location on an important migration route (called a flyway), the possibilities are almost endless. Below is a small selection of the great birds and significant counts from the reserve this year.
Harrier roost
Undoubtably, one of the highlights of any Winter at Titchwell is getting the chance to watch a mass of swirling Marsh Harriers over the reedbed as they each vie for a good roosting spot within the reedbed. These birds are a mix of British-breeding birds and Scandinavian birds that have moved south to enjoy our milder winters. January and February saw relatively low numbers for what is normally our peak time of year, with 22 harriers into roost during our monthly counts. This Autumn however, the numbers have already surpassed this with 32 Marsh counted in our November count, with numbers continuing to increase. This Autumn we have also enjoyed a regularly roosting ringtail Hen Harrier, often seen hunting over Thornham Marsh during the day before coming into the reedbed roost (often in almost darkness to avoid the bullying Marsh Harriers!) in the evening.
Spoonbill
Who doesn’t love a Spoonbill?! These enigmatic birds are an ever increasingly regular visitor to the reserve, especially from late Summer – Autumn as they begin to disperse from their breeding grounds, often in family units. A scan across the freshmarsh in this time often reveals several quietly resting, heads tucked in (don’t they love to sleep!), with an occasional stretch only then revealing the fantastic bill they are named after. In the first few days of September, the numbers roosting began to quickly increase, with the numbers eventually peaking on the 5th with a staggering 73 Spoonbills roosting over a hide tide – a huge reserve record! After this, the birds began to disperse as quickly as they came. With the number of Spoonbill breeding in the UK continue to increase, will this record be beaten next year? Let’s wait and see!
Part of the record-breaking flock of Spoonbills (Phil Gwilliam)
Waders
When I think of Titchwell, the first thing that comes to mind is waders. The reserve has an incredibly rich history of attracting real rarities, as well as allowing visitors to get great views of a wide variety of more common species. This year on the reserve we recorded 33 species of wading bird (almost all on the freshmarsh), including a fantastic trio of American species - Pectoral Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs and the long staying American Golden Plover. Other highlights included 2 Temminck’s Stint, a very good for Titchwell Stone Curlew and several Jack Snipe. A flock of several thousand Golden Plover continues to roost on the freshmarsh bunds in the Winter months – a lovely sight and sound! A great year despite the main outlet pipes for the freshmarsh breaking, meaning we had very limited control over the water levels, often resulting in less exposed mud than we would like. The pipes are due to be fixed early in the new year, so watch this space!
American Golden Plover amongst European Golden Plover (Cliff Gilbert)
Offshore
Looking out to sea, the mystery of wondering what is out there and relying on the effects of the weather to allow us a glimpse into a world we can’t normally see is what first got me into bird watching many moons ago. With Titchwell’s position on the Norfolk coast (famous for it’s Autumn seawatching) and location in a sheltered bay, protected by Scolt Head and Holme Dunes, with rich feeding from offshore mussel beds, it really is a great place to set up a scope and have a look. This Autumn/Winter has been a great spell off our coast with several cracking rarities, including an incredibly elusive drake Surf Scoter and a fly-by Sabine’s Gull. There has also been a large flock of up to 3000 Common Scoter, often close to shore, with up to 20 Velvet Scoter amongst them. Other scarcities seen include up to 2 Black-necked Grebes, Black-throated Diver, Black Guillemot, Slavonian Grebe, Great Northern Diver and several Long-tailed ducks. In the Summer, a flypast Caspian Tern was an unexpected treat for one or two lucky birders – a real rarity on the reserve!
Female Common Scoter (Phil Gwilliam)
Woods and scrub
Spring and Autumn is a time when many birdwatchers get very excited about looking in bushes (myself included!), as many birds moving to and from their breeding grounds touch down in our woodland and coastal scrub for a much needed rest and feed, before continuing their journey. Amongst the large numbers of more commonly seen species including thousands of thrushes, Goldcrests, Robins and Chiffchaffs, there is also the chance of seeing something much scarcer, often having travelled great distances and ending up many hundreds of miles from their original destination. This year was a great year for scarce and rare passage birds. In the Spring, there was not 1 but 2 singing Marsh Warblers (the first record in 30 years on the reserve!), along with a singing Great Reed Warbler that gave fantastic views just off the West Bank Path. There was also a cracking Grey-headed Wagtail (the northern Scandanavian-breeding race of yellow wagtail), seen around the freshmarsh, an adult male Rosy Starling and a brief (but beautiful!) male Red-backed Shrike on the hedge in Thornham Grazing Marsh. In the Spring and Summer, although we didn’t have any Turtle Doves breeding on the reserve this year, there was a definite increase in sightings of birds, both using the supplementary seed on the tank road and flying over. In the Autumn, Titchwell’s fine form for (the best Autumn migrant?!) Yellow-browed Warblers continued with up to 10 separate individuals reported, including a couple of long-stayers in the woodland. Other highlights include a second Red-backed Shrike, a Richard’s pipit and an elusive Pallas’s Warbler (that flew over my head calling while sawing wood outside the workshop!).
Great Reed Warbler (Lance Fisher)
The Grand Total
Overall, an amazing 221 species of bird was recorded on or from the reserve this year! It’s been another great year and a big thank you to all of our volunteers and visitors for making it a great one.