One for sorrow

A SMALL brigade of people is tramping the island counting birds.

They are part of a large army of birdwatchers who are engaged in the latest atlas project for the British Trust for Ornithology.

The BTO is preparing its latest assessment of the British bird population, which will include the status of every species throughout the country and offshore islands.

It will cover the years 2007 to 2011.

It is not the only project.

The BTO also organises BirdTrack, a project to monitor the timing of seasonal bird movements each year, and a breeding bird survey, while the RSPB has its popular Garden Bird Survey to keep members usefully busy.

Locally, La Societe Guernesiaise carries out monthly wader counts on all the island's beaches and records every species seen and breeding in the island.

Their botanical, entomological and other wildlife-orientated sections do similar surveys in their respective disciplines.

The BTO's atlas project involves splitting Britain into two-kilometre squares and getting volunteers to survey the birds in them.

The work requires commitment, a quality missing if one tours the world leading wildlife groups as I do.

However, during a lull this spring I joined Judy Down, one of the volunteers, as a 'scribe' to help survey a square which runs north of a line between Les Tielles and Le Prevote in Torteval and St Peter's.

It was not easy.

We had to record every bird seen and note what they were doing: feeding young, nesting, singing, prospecting for territory or just passing through.

A total of 34 species was recorded, including three kinds of gulls (all breeding, although a herring gull colony of 100 pairs seen last year had gone), fulmars, jackdaws and a passing raven, singing whitethroats which had just returned from Africa and a good passage of swallows and house martins.

We were supposed to spend just one hour walking the length of the square but this was impossible due to the terrain, which made counting nesting seabirds particularly difficult.

We headed inland eventually (finishing at my home, which is in Judy's census square) recording seven wheatears resting on their way north, singing blackcaps and chiffchaffs, and a migrant male redstart along a hedge close to my house.

These sightings and their inclusion among the Guernsey data will help scientists working for the BTO to build up a picture of bird distribution and activity.

The Alderney Wildlife Trust has taken on the atlas work in that island, while Andrew Prevel is doing the organisation of Sark.

All but one of Guernsey's most important 20 squares have been covered, with many of the lesser ones too, Phil said.

The importance of these projects comes when third parties ask for information about particular species or places. Because the statistics are gathered according to specific rules, the information gained by the BTO is impartial and reliable.

Magpies are back in the news with the public being urged to kill them.

The Songbird Survival Trust says that the way to stop the decline in small birds is to kill magpies and birds of prey.

It is opposed to programmes to reintroduce raptors where they have become extinct.

The trust promotes the use of Larsen traps, which use a live bird as bait to decoy others of its species, which are then caught alive.

The traps' owners then have to kill captured birds humanely. One local user told me that he 'beats their brains out on a stone wall'.

The decoy birds also have to be kept in humane conditions with shelter and water to protect them in the traps before they too are killed.

By killing magpies, Songbird Survival argues, we will increase the number of songbirds.

'Science is now proving what the gamekeepers of past years knew, that magpie predation of nests and fledglings is having a considerable impact on the reproductive capacity of other birds, and that their numbers must be controlled if we are to succeed in increasing our songbird population,' its website states.

Where is this science?

The section on magpies is full of emotive statements. For example: 'The most notorious part of their diet is the plundering of the nests of other birds, taking both eggs and chicks, and this predation has an effect on the populations of some of our songbirds. The cunning ability of a magpie to "work" a hedgerow or garden in search of nests, or to sit quietly and watch the coming and going of nesting birds, and thus locate their nest is unsurpassed.'

Compare that with the BTO's description of magpies, based on census work done by volunteers: 'For many people, the magpie is a villain, responsible for the widespread decline of songbirds. Research examining the question of whether magpies have been responsible for songbird decline has failed to find any evidence to support the notion that they are to blame.

'It is true that while magpie numbers have tended to increase, those of many of our songbird species have declined.

These increases and decreases have occurred over different time periods and in different parts of the country, which suggests that the general patterns are a coincidence and not cause-and-effect.'

Most telling of all is Songbird Survival's hidden sponsorship. As far as I'm aware, the organisation is backed by shooting and gamekeeping bodies.

Its interests seem to be financial, not scientific.