Where do birds go for Christmas?

Some people go away for Christmas, others stay at home. Ever wondered what birds do during winter?

'On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... two turtle doves...'

An extravagant gift by anyone's standards, especially when you take into account the gold rings and all the rest of it. And difficult to obtain, too, because at Christmas time, turtle doves are a long way south of the UK, somewhere south of the Sahara. 

Where exactly they go is not known at the moment, but finding out is increasingly important. We need to find out what's happening and where. Numbers of turtle doves have been falling since the 1970s - it's now estimated there are only seven turtle doves for every 100 there were in 1970. It's a shocking decline, but a team of RSPB researchers is working on ways to help turtle doves in the UK.

Where does the robin go bobbin'?

With all its appearances on cards at this time of year, the robin must be our commonest bird at the moment. Most robins that breed in the UK will stay put the whole year round, but occasionally some may head on to France, Spain or Portugal, which is where mainland Europe's robins spend winter.

The ospreys that breed at our nature reserve at Loch Garten in Scotland have been popular for decades. But thanks to smaller, lighter satellite tracking technology, we've been able to reveal where the young birds go once they've flown the nest. This autumn, we've followed Tore and Bynack on two different routes through France, Spain and north Africa, to spend their first Christmasses in Senegal (Tore) and Mauritania (Bynack).

Winter sun for birds

For a long time, people believed that swallows spent the winter in mud at the bottom of ponds. But in 1912, a swallow with a British ring was reported from Natal in South Africa. Ringing has shown that most of the swallows that breed in the UK head that way, but in contrast, we know very little about where house martins go. They sleep while flying and even have feathered legs and feet to keep them warm while they circulate at altitude!

Cuckoos arrive in the UK in from mid-April, and leave again in summer. But until very recently, we weren't sure where they went for winter. However, our friends at the British Trust for Ornithology have been satellite-tracking some cuckoos using tags that weigh the same as five paperclips, and all five tagged cuckoos have now arrived in the rainforests of Congo, central Africa.

Of course, some birds join us for winter. Turnstones are wading birds that are quite easy to see on a visit to the seaside - rummaging through seaweed or pebbles on a beach, or awaiting fish and chip remnants on the pier.

Take this example. In January 2000, one particular turnstone was fitted with special coloured plastic rings as part of a study of waders on The Wash in East Anglia. The unique combination of rings made it possible for the bird to be recognised another 45 times between 2000 and 2009, often on Hunstanton seafront.

Chips and what?

From its winter home in the UK, the turnstone returned to its breeding site at Alert in Arctic Canada. It's a pretty extreme place to go and breed - the average temperature in July is only 3.3 degrees Celsius (38 degrees F) and it’s just over 500 miles from the North Pole. A far cry from the English coast.

Erase images of pristine Arctic Frozen Planet-style landscapes from your mind. At Alert, the turnstone was feeding in a sewage outfall, together with another bird which had been ringed at The Wash! It goes to show that a rubbish diet in Canada, followed by chips in Hunstanton, helps a turnstone to live for at least 10 years...

Homebodies

With some birds undertaking mighty impressive journeys, it's perhaps a little disappointing to find out that a lot of garden birds - blue, great and long-tailed tits, dunnocks, sparrows, woodpeckers and wrens - are unlikely to ever fly very far from the place where they hatched. That makes your garden even more important!