MATURAL HOTOfrr •#; ,|<5P» «u? « inoaev PHtbENTirP ISSN 0007-0335 British Birds Established 1907, incorporating The Zoologist, established 1843 Published by BB 2000 Limited, trading as ‘British Birds’ Registered Office: cl o McPhersons CFG Limited, ,23 St Leonards Road Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex TN40 1HH www.britishbirds.co.uk Editorial Roger Riddington Spindrift, Eastshore, Virkie, Shetland ZE3 9JS Tel: 01950 460080 editor@britishbirds.co.uk ‘News & comment’ material to Adrian Pitches adrianpitches@blueyonder.co.uk Subscriptions & administration Hazel Jenner 4 Harlequin Gardens, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex TN37 7PF Tel & fax: 01424 755155 subscriptions@britishbirds.co.uk Design & production Mark Corliss m.corliss@netmatters.co.uk Advertising Mathew Hance, Digital Spring Ltd, Adam House, 7-10 Adam Street, The Strand, London WC2N 6AA Tel: 020 7520 9326 BB@digital-spring.co.uk Guidelines for contributors See www.britishbirds.co.uk British Birds Editorial staff Roger Riddington (Editor), Caroline Dudley, Peter Kennerley Editorial Board Dawn Balmer, Ian Carter, Richard Chandler, Martin Collinson, Mark Holling, Chris Kehoe, Robin Prytherch, Nigel Redman, Roger Riddington, Brian Small, Steve Votier Rarities Committee Adam Rowlands (Chairman), Chris Batty, Chris Bradshaw, Paul French, Martin Garner, Nic Hallam, James Lidster, Richard Millington, Mike Pennington, Richard Schofield, Steve Votier Secretary Nigel Hudson, Carn Ithen, Trench Lane, Old Town, St Mary’s, Scilly TR2 1 OPA; secretary@bbrc.org.uk Notes Panel Angela Turner (Chair), Will Cresswell, Ian Dawson, Jim Flegg, Ian Newton, Malcolm Ogilvie Annual subscription rates Individual subscriptions: UK - £53.00 Overseas (airmail) - £60.00 Libraries and agencies - £99.00 Back issues available from www.britishbirds.co.uk or the subscriptions office. 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Front-cover photograph: Adult male White-crowned Sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys , Cley, Norfolk, February 2008. Robin Chittenden CHAMPIONS OF THE FLYWAY: BIRD ENTHUSIASTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD! JOIN IN EILAT FOR THIS UNIQUE 24 HR COMPETITION! What is it? Get involved The “Champions of the Flyway” is a major international fund-raising bird race based on the concept of the American Big Day. Competing teams from around the world will try to log as many species as possible in a 24 hour period in one of the world’s finest migration destinations, Eilat. The goal is to raise money for the campaign against illegal hunting in SE Europe in conjunction with BirdLife International. You can either: • enter a team and compete to become one of the champions of the flyway or • support a team and be part of the conservation effort to protect europe’s migratory birds. 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Tel: 01223 401525 www.zeiss.co.uk/sportsoptics ZEISS We make it visible British Birds Volume 107 • Number 2 • February 2014 60 BB eye John Eyre 62 News and comment Adrian Pitches 66 The occurrence and arrival routes of North American landbirds in Britain Tom Bond 83 A Fregetta storm-petrel at Severn Beach, Avon - new to Britain Allan Gaunt , Richard Greer and John Martin 92 Nest productivity of Woodlarks: a case study on the Thames Basin Heaths John Eyre and Jim Baldwin 1 02 The BB/BTO Best Bird Book of the Year 2013 Peter Wilkinson et al. 1 05 Reviews 1 S 2 Recent reports Americans - loud/colourful/exaggerated/quarrelsome (I could go on). Birds, I’m talking about. Tom Bond’s analysis of the occurrence patterns and arrival routes of North American landbirds in this issue brings up to date a topic that has been visited more than once before in the pages of BB, but the subject matter is one that most readers find ‘properly gripping’ (to use one of Colin Bibby’s favourite phrases in the days when he was a judge for Bird Book of the Year). Notwithstanding the fact that ‘Sibes’ are (arguably) often the more elegant and visually stunning of birds, ‘Yanks’ wow us with the fact that they have crossed the Atlantic to reach our shores. Go back 60-70 years and very few people believed that landbirds were physically capable of such a crossing. Small wonder then that finding an American passerine is a lifetime highlight for many British birders. Finding an American passerine is one thing, finding a bird new to Britain is quite another. I still live in hope, anyway. The finders’ account of a Fregetta petrel in Avon, published in this issue, has been a long time coming for a number of reasons. When finalising the article, and imagining the spectrum of emo- tions among the group that found it, on a blustery morning in November 2009 at the splendidly named Burger Bar Ramp, I couldn’t help but think about the fine line between success and failure for a record such as this. In this particular case, several observers managed to see the bird pretty well, and the consis- tency of their accounts made the record acceptable, even though pinning it down to species level was just not possible. An earlier seawatching claim from Norfolk became mired in controversy when the observers who saw the bird disagreed about what they had seen - which then creates an almost impossible situation for rarity assessors (see p. 91). What should have been one of those lifetime highlights (as it undoubtedly was for those observers at Severn Beach) can so easily turn sour; and the aftertaste of a bad experience can last just as long - if not longer - than a good one. The highs and lows of birding. . . Roger Riddington & FSC www.fsc.org MIX Paper from responsible sources FSC* C022506 British Birds aims to: provide an up-to-date magazine for everyone interested in the birds of the Western Palearctic; ♦> publish a range of material on behaviour, conservation, distribution, ecology, identification, movements, status and taxonomy as well as the latest ornithological news and book reviews; ♦> maintain its position as the journal of record; and »> interpret scientific research on birds in an easily accessible way. © British Birds 2014 88 eye Bird Atlas 2007-1 I What do you think of the Atlas? It’s a subject Fve heard discussed so many times since the book was published, last November. The ques- tion is not difficult to answer. It’s a fantastic achievement, the most important British and Irish bird book for decades. It’s a superb example of what a team of enthusiastic volun- teers can do and, perhaps most importantly, it provides a mass of information to guide conservation and research many years into the future. I firmly believe that these and many similar accolades are well deserved - but then I would say that wouldn’t I? My involvement in the current atlas goes back about 12 years (to a meeting of BTO Council when the proposal to embark on the project first came to the table), and devel- oped through my participation in the Atlas Working Group and then the five years of fieldwork. Throughout the entire project the intention was always to publish the results in a book. At the beginning, that goal seemed very distant but now Bird Atlas 2007-1 1 has arrived and I want to use the opportunity of this BB eye to give my personal reaction to it. When I received my copy, my very first thought was: ‘It’s heavy!’ I cleared a space on my bookshelves alongside the three earlier distribution atlases and saw how it dwarfed its predecessors - this is an imposing tome. At this stage my mind wandered to past discussions about the demise of books - how paper will be replaced by e-readers and online publications. Perhaps, but my shelves give no clue that this will happen in the near future! And from what I hear, this is already the best-selling BTO publication ever, so I’m not the only one who still appreciates a ‘good, old-fashioned' book! Why is it so big? A quick flick through the species accounts soon answers that question. With up to seven maps of Britain & Ireland displaying summer and winter distribution, relative abundance and change for most species recorded during the Atlas fieldwork, it has to be big. The text, photographs and other items included in the accounts have been kept deliberately small to allow maximum space for the maps. If I have one grumble, it would be that the maps are still on the small side, but would I want an even bigger book to accommodate larger maps? Certainly not. Having felt the weight, what about the quality? I’m not thinking of the production quality, which seems to be very good, but the quality of the information. What does the Atlas tell us? I’m sure I’m not alone in skim- ming through the first few chapters and heading swiftly to the species accounts. The first accounts I looked at were for heathland species, including Woodlark Lullula arborea and Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata, special favourites of mine from my patch on the Thames Basin Heaths. There were no real surprises here. The maps confirm the find- ings of earlier national surveys showing how the ranges of both species have expanded north from their southern strongholds. Two good-news stories, perhaps due in part to the extensive heathland restoration work carried out over the past two decades, but it’s no coincidence that the population growth occurred during a period with a run of mild winters. More recently, both species have declined in my local area as a result of harsh winters. Their populations on the Thames Basin Heaths SPA are now below the counts made in the late 1990s, which were the basis for designating the SPA. The Atlas maps don’t show these more recent results, which made me ponder whether the declines have occurred elsewhere, and whether the range maps in the Atlas are optimistic. I then looked at some of our key farmland species, which have declined so dramatically in Hampshire and elsewhere. There are some disappointing, and sometimes surprising, stories here. The Tree Sparrow Passer mon- tanus has become extinct as a breeding bird in Hampshire and throughout much of south- east England, yet the species has made gains in northeast Scotland and Ireland. The Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava, another breeding species lost from Hampshire, also shows con- tinuing declines in the south; Grey Partridges Perdix perdix, Turtle Doves Streptopelia turtur 60 © British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 60-61 BB eye and Corn Buntings Emberiza calandra can all still be found in my home county but seeing them nowadays is a notable event. The breeding change maps show that many of the downward trends in these and other farmland species were already apparent 40 years ago. Plenty of research has been done in the interim to discover the reasons. The Atlas accounts refer to the now-familiar tale of the effects of farming intensification: the reduc- tion in winter food supply with the spread of autumn-sown cereals; increased use of agro- chemicals; the disappearance and degradation of field margins; the reduced availability of invertebrates as a result of pesticide usage, etc. Based on these findings, considerable efforts have been made to reverse the slide, beginning with the first agri-environment scheme in 1986 and leading to the introduction of Envir- onmental Stewardship in 2005. Regrettably, there is little evidence in the Atlas that these measures are adequate: populations of farm- land birds are not recovering. And, when I moved on to woodland birds, such as Lesser Spotted Woodpecker Dendrocopos minor , Willow Tit Poecile montanus and Wood Warbler Phylloscopus sibilatrix , followed by breeding waders such as Northern Lapwing Vanellus vanellus , Common Redshank Tringa totanus and Common Snipe Gallinago galli- nago , it confirmed that these species too are on a very slippery downward slope. None of these declines was unexpected but seeing them all together and so graphically illustrated by the Atlas change maps was telling. We can be rightfully proud of our efforts to map the changing fortunes of our birds. I doubt that any other country in the world can claim such a comprehensive record of both its breeding and its wintering species. But can we be equally satisfied with what our country has done to address the large-scale losses from our wider countryside? Shouldn’t we as a nation be doing more to turn around those declines? At the end of last year, the Government announced its decision to increase the share of CAP (Common Agricul- tural Policy) funding going to environmental protection by a lower percentage than origi- nally promised. Instead, a review will be carried out in 2016, with the possibility of moving to the higher rate of funding in 2017 and 2018. 1 want to see the Atlas results used as forcibly as possible to contribute to and influence this debate. It’s clear that more needs to be done and we can all help by shouting those results from the rooftops: local newspapers, social media, lobbying our MPs, and more. It won’t be easy to turn things around. Against a background of changing climate, rapid population growth, increased demands on land and food both at home and abroad - not to mention the ebb and flow of national politics - some of our familiar and wide- spread birds, species we have known throughout our lives, may be destined for continuing decline. The news is not uniformly bad, however. At the time of the 1988-91 Atlas, Red Kite Milvus milvus , Peregrine falcon Falco peregrinus and Goshawk Accipiter gentilis were not proved breeding in Hampshire; today all three are well established. There are other newcomers too: Goosander Mergus merganser , Little Egret Egretta garzetta , Great Cormorant Phalacro- corax carbo , Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta , Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus and Common Raven Corvus corax (returning after an absence of over 100 years). Perhaps most surprising of all, and surely unexpected from a global warming perspective, is that we now have Common Eider Somateria mollissima breeding in the county! Excluding the raptors, all these have colonised Hampshire over the last two decades under their own steam and, in some cases, in the face of hostility from Homo sapiens, from a species diversity stand- point we have gained more than we have lost. I will finish as I began, with a question. Do we accept as inevitable that our bird diversity and numbers will change, and learn to live with that, or do we do everything we can to retain the countryside birds that we have grown up with? My answer would be that these two options are not mutually exclusive. Let’s celebrate the newcomers and do our damnedest to retain the old guard. John Eyre What do you think? Join the debate at www.bntishbirds.co.uk/category/editorials British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 60-61 61 George Petrie News and comment Compiled by Adrian Pitches Opinions expressed in this feature are not necessarily those of British Birds Tiny tag reveals record-breaking phalarope migration A tracking device weighing less than a paperclip has shown that a Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobotus from the tiny Shetland breeding population migrated thousands of kilometres west across the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a journey never recorded for any other European breeding bird. In 2012, the RSPB, working in collaboration with the Swiss Ornithological Institute and the Shetland Ringing Group, fitted individual geoloca- tors to ten breeding Red-necked Phalaropes on Fetlar, in Shetland, in the hope of learning where they spend the winter. After successfully recapturing one of the tagged birds when it returned to Fetlar last spring, scien- tists discovered that it had made an epic 25,000- km round trip during its annual migration - flying from Shetland across the Atlantic, south down the eastern seaboard of the USA, across the Caribbean, and Mexico, ending up off the coast of Peru. After wintering in the Pacific, it returned to Fetlar via a similar route. Prior to this, many experts had assumed that phalaropes breeding in Scotland joined the Scan- dinavian population at their wintering grounds, thought to be in the Arabian Sea. Yet the destina- tion of this Shetland Red-necked Phalarope was the Pacific Ocean. In winter, phalaropes congregate in large flocks at sea in regions where currents create upwellings of cold, nutrient-rich water and support blooms of plankton on which the birds feed. By continuing the project and retrieving more tags from phalaropes after the next winter migration, experts hope to learn the extent to which the Red-necked Phalarope, one of the UK’s rarest breeding birds, may be affected by future changes at sea, how the species might respond to any changes and whether any neg- ative impacts in these wintering areas can be miti- gated by conservation management here in the UK. The RSPB’s Malcie Smith said: Intriguingly, if the usual wintering area of Scottish Red-necked Phalaropes is indeed in the eastern Pacific, then this Scottish breeding bird may be directly affected by periodic El Nino events when these Pacific waters become warmer and the supply of plankton is greatly reduced. With that in mind, the project, which we will continue, will be vital when consid- ering any future conserva- tion of this bird.' 30. Hard at work on Fetlar in June 20 1 3, Shetland Ringing Group’s Dave Okill (left), with a Red-necked Phalarope Phalaropus lobatus (centre) and Fetlar RSPB warden Malcie Smith. Golden Eagle found poisoned in RSPB Scotland has condemned those responsible for the killing of a satellite-tagged Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos , found poisoned on the hills above Glen Fethnot in Angus & Dundee. The bird was discovered after Roy Dennis, of the Highland Foundation for Wildlife, who was the Angus GSens monitoring the eagle’s movements, became suspi- cious when the bird’s satellite signal remained static for several days. He alerted the police and RSPB Scotland investigations staff, who later visited the area - which is intensively managed for grouse shooting - and a search of the moor 62 © British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 62-65 News and comment allowed the recovery of the dead bird. Tests carried out by the Scottish Government laboratory of Science and Advice for Scottish agri- culture confirmed that the eagle had been poi- soned. It had been ringed as a chick in a nest near Loch Tay, in Perth & Kinross, in June 2011 and had spent much of its life in Badenoch, before moving to the Angus glens in early November. Just three weeks later, it had been poisoned. Stuart Housden, Director of RSPB Scotland, said: ‘This appalling incident involving a species recently voted as the nation’s favourite bird, marks a dreadful end to the Year of Natural Scotland. Incidents such as this show very clearly why this iconic bird needs not just our recognition, but also greater protection. We sincerely hope that those responsible are swiftly brought to justice and would encourage those with information to come forward.’ In the past five and a half years, another four Golden Eagles, a Red Kite Milvus milvus and seven Common Buzzards Buteo buteo have been shot, poisoned or trapped on sporting estates in the Angus glens. In January 2013, the nest tree of a pair of White-tailed Eagles Haliaeetus albicilla was felled. No-one has been prosecuted for any of these offences. Mr Housden added: ‘I will be asking the envir- onment spokesperson of all the parties in the Scot- tish Parliament to take cross-party action to stiffen the penalties for those convicted of such offences and to look again at the regulation of sport shooting. The current state of affairs is simply unacceptable.’ A recent report by RSPB Scotland revealed that a significant number of incidents of illegal killing of birds of prey took place in areas managed for driven grouse shooting. RSPB responds to future of aviation report The Davies Commission into the future of avia- tion has once again highlighted the environmental destruction an airport in the Thames Estuary would cause. In his report, Sir Howard favours new runways at existing airports, with Heathrow ahead of Gatwick. But he has included a second- division level of a new airport on Kent’s Hoo Peninsula in the Thames Estuary, which he acknowledges would be both expensive (up to £112 billion) and environmentally damaging. The RSPB believes that further airport expan- sion will undermine efforts to reduce our climate impact in the UK, and that further scrutiny of an option in the Thames Estuary will lead to it being ruled out completely. The tidal mudflats, saltmarsh and reedbeds that line the estuary are one of the most important wildlife habitats in Europe, home to a rich ecosystem which includes hundreds of thousands of threatened wintering birds. It is designated with the highest environmental protection available. Sue Armstrong-Brown, RSPB head of policy, said: ‘Every time a spotlight is put on the Thames Estuary as a potential site for an airport it is revealed to be both an environmental disaster and economic lunacy. The more scrutiny put on this proposal, the more clear it will be for all concerned that it is a non-starter. However, climate change remains the greatest long-term threat to wildlife. We believe there should be no further airports in this country until the Government can demon- strate how they can be built and operated without busting our legally binding climate targets.’ ‘Bird’s-eye views’: a new perspective Detecting food or identifying predators and other close objects are key to how birds control flight, rather than looking ahead or below, according to research published by ornithologists from the Uni- versity of Birmingham. What birds see and just what they are looking at as they fly over is far from a ‘Google Earth view’ of the world. This new analysis of the visual worlds of over 50 species of birds shows that there are just as many ways of seeing the world as there are species, and none of them involves simply looking down and seeing the world as we would from an aircraft or high vantage point. Looking into the eyes of birds has shown that each species has a different way of extracting information from the world about them and that this is tuned primarily to the exacting tasks of for- aging and being able to control the position of the bill with high accuracy. Controlling flight and getting an overview of the world ahead and below is a minor consideration in driving the evolution of bird’s-eye views. ‘The cliche, the bird’s-eye view, needs a makeover - the prime shaper of bird vision turns out to be the location of objects close by, esti- mating how long it will take the bill tip to reach them, and ensuring that the bill arrives bang on target,’ said Prof. Graham Martin from the Univer- sity of Birmingham, the author of this survey on bird vision. ‘Seeing what lies ahead and below in British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 62-65 63 News and comment flight is not that important, what occupies most birds are near things, close objects that are edible, or chicks in the nest. Detecting and locating them with high accuracy are what drives the overall visual capacities of birds.’ Graham Martin has reviewed work on bird vision that he and others have conducted over the last 30 years. ‘At one time I followed the traditional view that the challenges of flight have been the real driving force in the evolution of how birds see the world, but now I argue that it is all to do with close objects and controlling the bird’s bill. Getting to a nearby object and opening the bill at the right moment to grasp it with a high degree of precision is what is really important, next most important is detecting whether a predator is coming, third is whether the bird can place food accurately in its chick’s mouth, and only last do the requirements for controlling flight, and looking out ahead and below have any bearing on how birds see the world.’ He continued: ‘Humans have always been fasci- nated and envious of birds’ ability to fly, and we have assumed that it is a challenging task that really requires seeing the world in a special way. We have always assumed that a bird’s-eye view is what we experience when looking down from a height, when all is made clear and simple to us, hence the popular notion of a bird’s-eye view. But flight is just one aspect of birds’ daily lives; finding food and detecting predators are the real all-day, everyday, survival tasks of birds, and it now seems clear that bird’s-eye views are tuned to these tasks, not to flight and getting the overall picture of what lies ahead and below.’ ‘The subtlety of simple eyes: the tuning of visual fields to perceptual challenges in birds’ is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B , available online http://rstb. royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/ 1636/ 20 1 30040.abstract Birding World 1 987-20 1 4 The announcement that Birding World would cease publication with the January 2014 issue was sad news for birders who’ve looked forward to its timely reports on rare birds every month for the past 27 years. Steve Gantlett and Richard Millington tapped into their readers’ desire for rapid rarity reports as twitching took in the era of Birdline, pagers and, in due course, rarity news on the internet. Now that finders’ accounts appear online within hours of a rare bird being sighted, the desire of Steve and Richard to step off the monthly publishing treadmill and spend even more time birding is entirely understandable. N&c was a subscriber from the first issue of Twitching , the forerunner of Birding World. It’s interesting to note that one of the first ‘megas’ fea- tured was the Brtinnich’s Guillemot Uria lomvia in Shetland in February 1987; the same species fea- tured prominently in the final issue too - the long- stayer in Portland Harbour in December 2013. So British Birds once again becomes the only monthly journal for the UK’s birders available solely by subscription. Many of our readers will have been Birding World subscribers too - but plenty of BW readers may need reminding what an essential monthly read BB is! We want as many new recruits as possible so that our subscriber base remains sufficient to ensure that BB remains the vibrant, agenda-setting journal we hope you look forward to receiving every month. There’s a special offer for Birding World subscribers only: £25 for their first year’s BB subscription. Please spread the word. Artwork on the cover of BB Richard Millington’s vivid painting ‘D. minor’ was on the front of the last issue of BW and this seems an opportune moment to remind readers that BB is not averse to artwork on its cover either. In the past decade, there have been very few artwork covers, and while the large majority of future covers are likely to remain photographic, we do encourage anyone willing to come up with a suitable piece of art to get in touch. More details are available at www.britishbirds.co.uk/about/how-to-contribute African Bird Club - 20th anniversary meeting This year’s annual meeting of the ABC at the Natural History Museum in London marks the club’s 20th anniversary and all founder members have been invited to attend. Following its launch in the UK in 1994, the ABC has expanded its activi- ties in Africa significantly and last year alone spent £30,000 on conservation grants. This took total funding of conservation initiatives to £170,000 across 170 projects in 32 countries. Speakers at the meeting on Saturday 12th April include: Achilles Byaruhanga from Uganda, looking at the State of Africa’s Birds; Roger Safford, outlining recent discoveries in the Malagasy region; Tim Birk- head, on weaver birds and honeyguides, and how promiscuity is widespread amongst these families in Africa; David Pearson, looking back on four decades of intensive bird ringing at Ngulia in Kenya; and Jim Reynolds, ‘terning’ back the clock to look at lessons learnt from 20 years of fieldwork on Ascension Island. 64 British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 62-65 News and comment Fanfare for the White-winged Scoter Is this the way forward for announcing additions to the British List? A feature on BBC’s The One Show in August about the work of rarities committees included the announcement of the BOURC’s accept- ance of White-winged Scoter Melanitta deglandi as a new British bird. Photographs of what appears to be the first British record of ‘Stejneger’s Scoter’ M. d. stejnegeri (the Asian form of White- winged) - in Lothian, on Boxing Day last year - have just come to light. The use of cheerleaders to greet the arrival of the American deglandi on the British List was a novel touch; perhaps we’ll be treated to Cossack dancers for stejnegeri7. 3 I . Fanfare for the White-winged Scoter. The rumour from the BBRC Secretary, who sent us this pic, is that the third cheerleader from the left is the next BBRC chairman, but at the time of writing we are unable to confirm that... New county bird recorders Gwent Tom Chinnick, 51 Emlyn Avenue, Ebbw Vale, Gwent NP23 5TY; tel. 01495 350360; e-mail thomaschinnick@hotmail.com Herefordshire Michael Colquhoun, Old Gore House, Old Gore, Ross on Wye, Herefordshire HR9 7QT; tel. 01989 780580; e-mail mcc@ mcolquhoun.plus.com Outer Hebrides Yvonne Benting and Ian Thompson, Suthainn, Askernish, Isle of South Uist, Western Isles HS8 5SY; tel. 01878 700849; e-mail recorder@outerhebridesbirds.org.uk Shetland Rob Fray, Sunnydell, Virkie, Shetland ZE3 9JS; tel. 01950 461929; e-mail recorder@ shetlandbirdclub.co.uk The Great White Egret in Europe: the colonisation continues After last month’s paper about the population spread of Great White Egrets Ardea alba in Europe (Brit. Birds 107: 8-25), it is worth noting that in 2013 another European country joined the list where the species has bred: one pair produced two fledglings at Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland (thanks to Peter Knaus of the Swiss Ornitholog- ical Institute for the report, via Lukasz Lawicki, the author of the paper in BB). BB Bird Photograph of the Year 20 1 4 The 38th BB Bird Photograph of the Year competi- tion is free to enter and seeks to recognise the best and/or the most scientifically interesting photo- graphs of Western Palearctic birds taken during 2013. The competition’s main sponsor in 2014 will again be Anglian Water, to whom we remain extremely grateful. For full details of the rules and how to submit entries, go to www.britishbirds. co.uk/about/bird-photograph-of-the-year The closing date for the 2013 competition is 1st April 2014. anglian For extended versions of many of the stories featured here, and much more, visit our website www.britishbirds.co.uk British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 62-65 65 The occurrence and arrival routes of North American landbirds in Britain Tom Bond Abstract Accepted records of North American landbirds in Britain from 1958 to 2012 were analysed to discover seasonal, temporal and regional occurrence trends, and then to discuss possible arrival routes. Records in Britain are compared with those from the Azores and Iceland. The only species to occur in the top five most frequent American landbirds in each of these three areas was Red-eyed Vireo. Over 80% of all British records during the review period were in autumn, the peak arrival centred on 9th- 1 0th October. In southwest England, 95% of arrivals were in autumn; in contrast, in the Northern Isles, spring accounted for 31% of all American landbird records. A lack of vigorous transatlantic weather systems in spring suggests that a higher proportion of records at this season are ship-assisted birds, especially given the numbers of North American sparrows involved. Although vagrant birds arrive in Britain from all points of the compass, those from North America are perhaps the most deserving of admiration, having crossed vast expanses of the North Atlantic - the dis- tance from New England to the Isles of Scilly is more than 5,000 km. The appearance of North American landbirds in Britain has become an annual expectation in recent decades, especially in autumn. From the 1960s onwards, October on Scilly became the focal point of the calendar for many rarity hunters, with American landbirds arguably the main attraction. For example, in October 1985 there were no fewer than 14 records of seven species of American landbird on Scilly (Rogers et al. 1986, 1989). In recent years, however, there has been a growing perception of dwindling numbers of American birds (and visiting birders) on Scilly in October. Until the early 1950s, few ornithologists believed it was possible for landbirds to fly across the Atlantic unaided, and it was gener- 66 ally accepted that those which did occur were escaped cagebirds (BOU 1956). One of the first American landbirds generally considered to be a natural vagrant was an American Robin (scientific names of species mentioned in the text are given in table 1) on Fundy, Devon, in October-November 1952. In this case, Atlantic pressure systems prior to the bird’s discovery were thought to have been ideal for a wind-assisted passage, which may have been achievable in less than 40 hours, within the physical capability of such a bird (Davis 1953). More recently, there is compelling evi- dence that many North American birds in Britain are natural vagrants, rather than ship- assisted or escapes. The most frequently occurring species are generally long-distance migrants, physiologically well adapted for long flights across the sea. The three species with most British records during 1958-2012 - Red-eyed Vireo, Grey-cheeked Thrush and Blackpoll Warbler - migrate directly between © British Birds 107 • February 2014 • 66-82 North American landbirds in Britain 32. Red-eyed Vireo Vireo olivaceus, St Mary’s, Scilly, October 2008. This species was the most frequent North American iandbird recorded in Britain during 1958-2012 (and also features in the top five for both Iceland and the Azores). In Britain, however, it is very much a southwestern speciality - the first record for Shetland was not until 2012, and there have been just two Northern Isles records since the formation of BBRC (although the long-anticipated first for Fair Isle appeared in October 2013). the Gulf Coast of the USA and the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico (TPWD 2012), and a significant propor- tion of the population winters in Brazil (Cornell 2012). Blackpoll Warblers are thought to make transoceanic flights in autumn from south- eastern Canada and northeast USA directly to South America (Nisbet et al 1995). Robbins (1980) found that the four variables which best predicted British records of Amer- ican landbirds were: (stan- dard deviation of) body weight - a measure of the ability to store fat; migra- tory distance; abundance on the east coast of North America; and a west-to-east component of their normal migration. Furthermore, many records are from the extremities of Britain (in particular Scilly, the Outer Hebrides and the Northern Isles, rather than around ports, as might be expected for ship-assisted birds), while many records have been linked to particular Atlantic weather systems, as in the autumns of 1975, 1976 and 1987 (Elkins 1979, 1999, 2008). In an analysis of records from 1967 to 1976, it was considered that as many as three- quarters of arrivals were linked to the passage of fast-moving warm sectors that had crossed the Atlantic within 2-3 days (Elkins 1979). Radar studies have shown passerine migrants moving between northeastern USA and the Caribbean (McClintock et al. 1978), while non-stop flights of 3,000-4,000 km (only a little shorter than the distance between North America and Britain) are a regular feature of autumn migration for many species (Richardson 1976). The situation in spring is somewhat different, however: not only is there little passage of migrants over the western Atlantic, but vigorous Atlantic depressions are less frequent. This paper analyses the seasonal, temporal and spatial arrival patterns of North Amer- ican landbirds reaching Britain, and discusses their likely arrival routes, using accepted British records during the period 1958-2012 (available from BBRC annual reports and their website, www.bbrc.org.uk). The analysis was limited to passerines and near-passerines (table 1), since the larger migratory species are capable of making longer continuous flights, have different migration strategies, and are able to take advantage of high-alti- tude winds. For example, arrivals of Amer- ican landbirds in Britain often do not correlate with those of American waders (Elkins 2008). Dates used in figs. 1 and 3-4 represent discovery dates for the records in question. Data from Iceland (Birding Iceland 2011) and the Azores (Birding Azores 2012) were used for comparison with sightings in Britain. The species involved During 1958-2012, there were 734 accepted British records of North American landbirds of 59 species, giving an average of nearly 14 records a year (table 1). The five most fre- quent species were Red-eyed Vireo (125 records), Grey-cheeked Thrush (52), Black- poll Warbler (45), White-throated Sparrow (42) and Yellow-billed Cuckoo (41 ). 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