Before we provide todays sightings, we’d like to make you aware of a report that was published today by Birdlife International which highlights the mass licensed, legal killing of birds across EU member states (including the UK) over a nine year period of 2009 – 2017. The licenses, also known as derogations are granted by governmental organisations to individuals (landowners, farmers, supermarkets etc) to ‘deal’ with birds that start having an impact on either health, produce and profit! The study found that c84,000 licenses were granted during this time period with c17,000 to the UK alone! The report highlights that across the EU, a whopping 14 million birds were legally killed which if you add to the totals of illegally killed birds (c25 million) as well as species that are disappearing due to habitat loss, climate change, lack of insects etc then it adds to an already pretty grim picture. The main species concerned are Feral Pigeon (c2.5 million) and Wood Pigeon (c1 million) but also include Starling (c1.5 million), Song Thrush (c700k), Chaffinch (550k), Blackbird (c350k) and Fieldfare (c300k) to name a few. The report not only highlights the scale, but also the EU commissions inability to follow protocol and govern the Habitats and Birds Directives which states that full reporting of derogations is mandatory for all EU member states, however when the report was being carried out, huge gaps in the data were found. There are numerous species mentioned within the report relevant to Poole Harbour, most notably the Cormorant, a protected species that’s been in steady decline here in Dorset for many years. However, it’s been noted that over the last 9 years around c400,000 Cormorant were killed legally with a population of only c240,000 pairs! Pretty staggering. You can read the shortened version of the report HERE or the full report HERE.
Birds in the harbour today included the Long-tailed Duck again off Furzey Island, viewed from Jerry’s Point. Also 4 Great Northern Diver, 5 Black-necked Grebe, 2 Scaup, 31 Red-breasted Merganser. At Lytchett Bay there were 2 Water Pipit, including one of the ringed individuals. In the Wareham Channel there were 4 Marsh Harrier and the Hen Harrier was also seen off Swineham Point.
Water Pipit – Lytchett Bay – Ian Ballam
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