Cold brings rare birds to Attenborough
Tuesday 12th January
Visitors to our Attenborough Nature Reserve have enjoyed a treat in recent days following the sighting of an unusually high number of rare bitterns. Whilst staff and volunteers would normally hope to see two or three birds each winter, the arrival of five birds has caused a real stir.
It is believed that the birds have been forced to seek new feeding grounds as a result of the prolonged cold spell and that they may have arrived from the continent.
Click here to view a YouTube clip of one of the bitterns at Attenborough.
The growth of the bittern population over the last decade is regarded as one of the UK’s biggest conservation success stories with the population growing by around 250% following efforts to create new areas of reedbed habitat for the birds. Whilst the reedbeds at Attenborough Nature Reserve are not large enough to support breeding bitterns, they have regularly attracted overwintering birds – but never as many this year.
Speaking about the bitterns’ arrival, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust Conservation Officer Mark Speck said: “Each year we hope to welcome one or two bitterns but when we realized we had at least five individual birds on site we were amazed. This must be one of the largest over-wintering populations in the UK and we hope that one day the Trent Valley will resound with the evocative booming mating call of the bittern.”
In recent years the Trent Valley has become increasingly important for over-wintering bitterns with birds regularly visiting sites such as Derbyshire Wildlife Trust’s Willington Nature reserve Reserve. In recent days there have also been reports of bitterns at Netherfield Lagoons and Holme Pierrepont.
Mr Speck continued: “We believe that the increased number of visiting bitterns is partly due to the severity of the weather. The fact that some areas of the reserve are frozen has also forced the birds into different parts of the reserve making them easier to spot than normal. However, whilst this presents a great opportunity for people to see a bird that they may never have seen before, we would ask people to take extra care not to cause disturbance. During severe weather birds not only need to expend more energy to maintain their body temperature, but food becomes much more difficult for them to obtain, making them particularly vulnerable to disturbance by people.”
Details of the latest bird sightings on the reserve can be accessed via the Attenborough Nature Centre website.
