Hampshire Bird Report 2012 Hampshire Ornithological Society Published November 2013 Published November 2013 by the Hampshire Ornithological Society Registered Charity no. 1042309 www.hos.org.uk ISBN 978-0-9567712-3-0 £10.50 Text, photographs and artwork copyright © the Hampshire Ornithological Society and named authors and contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. The views expressed in this report are not necessarily those held by the Hampshire Ornithological Society. Printed by Hampshire Printing Services, Winchester, Hampshire. HOS is pleased to acknowledge the help of Hampshire County Council and Portsmouth City Council in the publication of this Report. Front cover: Wryneck at Pennington Marsh, Sep 13th 2012 by John Hilton. Frontispiece: Short-eared Owls by Dan Powell. Additional artwork by David Thelwell (www.dathelwell.co.uk) and Dan & Rosemary Powell (www.powellwildlifeart.com). AIMS OF THE SOCIETY The Hampshire Ornithological Society has three broad aims: • To promote the recording and study of bird life in Hampshire and to publish the results in its annual Bird Report. • To use these results to encourage and support the conservation of wild birds and their habitats in the County. • To foster a wider interest in the recording and preservation of Hampshire bird life by organising a programme of indoor and outdoor meetings, by publishing a quarterly magazine and other forms of publicity. MEMBERSHIP The annual subscription is £12 for Ordinary, Joint or Family membership; £5 for Junior membership (under 18s). Full membership information is given on p. 206 and on the HOS web site: http://www.hos.org.uk. Hampshire Bird Report 2012 Editor: John Clark [email protected] County Recorder: Keith Betton HOS Records Panel: Keith Betton, Bob Chapman, Simon Ingram, Nigel Jones, Marcus Ward and Simon Woolley Hampshire Ornithological Society 2013 Chairman’s Report 2012 This is my first report as Chairman and covers the period up to the 2013 Annual General Meeting (AGM). It would be remiss of me not to begin by thanking John Eyre as outgoing Chairman for all that he did for the Society for twenty years. I hope that you will find me a worthy successor and that I can continue his good work. John hinted at changes afoot to ensure that honorary officers didn’t outstay their welcome. At the AGM in March a rule change was adopted that the Chairman would serve for a five year term with the option of a second five year stint, which is something which I wholeheartedly support. It is fitting too that John, together with Margaret Boswell (Sales Officer) and Nigel Peace (Treasurer) were awarded life membership in recognition of all that they had done for the Society. Alan Cox’s decision to step down as the editor of the Bird Report came as something of a shock to the committee; we are however so lucky that John Clark has agreed to take on the role once more. We were delighted to give Alan life membership for all his years of devotion to what is no mean feat in the production of one of the premier bird reports in the country. Bird Trail was held at Bolderwood in the New Forest and once again was very well supported. It was ably organised by Dawn Russell and her team who are to be congratulated on the whole event. I know that it is an old cliché, but we do continuously need new blood and this is a great way to encourage youngsters to take up the mantle. Dawn has decided to stand down as the organiser and I would like to thank her on behalf of the society for all that she has done to make the event a great success every year. I am also delighted to announce that Paul Levy has agreed to take on the role for the 2013 event, which will be held at Blashford Lakes. HOS is fortunate to have an active and healthy membership that stands at around 1600. The AGMs continue to draw an attendance of at least 300 annually. It has come to the stage where we may have to consider alternative venues which accommodate more people and have more extensive parking facilities. Those that attended this year will have heard me mention a list of willing volunteers that I have started. Often people leave their post for one reason or another and it would be nice to have a waiting list, hence my plea for people to come forward. You may not hear from me for some time, but it makes for a seamless transition if we have someone in the wings, ready to step in at short notice. If you feel that this could be something that interests you, please get in touch for an informal chat anytime. Finally I should like to thank all those on the various committees (Management, Scientific and Membership) who have given me so much help and support in my first full year of office and work so tirelessly on your behalf. Three in particular that stood down at this year’s AGM deserve special thanks for their contributions, namely David Thelwell and Andy Page as ordinary members and Ian Julian as Kingfisher editor. I hope they will resurface in other roles but until then I trust they will enjoy a well-deserved break. Alan Snook, August 2013 2 Contents Chairman’s Report Alan Snook 2 Editorial and Acknowledgements John Clark 4 List of Abbreviations 6 Review of Birds in Hampshire 2012 Richard Carpenter 7 Systematic List of Species John Clark assisted by Keith Betton, Malcolm Dixon, Mark Edgeller, John Eyre, John Jones, David Minns, Paul Norris, Graham Osborne, Andy Page, John Shillitoe, Barry Stalker, Marcus Ward, Keith Wills and Simon Woolley 15 Escapes and others 159 Table 1: Results of Thames Basin and Wealden Heaths breeding bird surveys 161 Table 2: Results of BTO Breeding Bird Survey in Hampshire 162 Table 3: Results of BTO Garden BirdWatch Survey in Hampshire 164 Table 4: Summary of WeBS count coverage in Hampshire 166 Table 5: Departure and arrival dates of winter visitors 168 Table 6: Arrival and departure dates of summer visitors 169 Appendix 1: Records pending and not proven 170 Observers and contributors 171 Guidelines for the submission of records 176 Report on bird ringing in Hampshire in 2012 Tony Davis 181 Honey-buzzards in Hampshire, 1954-2012 E J Wiseman 189 Results of targeted surveys of Firecrests and other woodland species in central New Forest 2009-11 Marcus Ward & Russell B Wynn 196 First for Hampshire – Spanish Sparrow in Calshot Sue Wilson 204 HOS organisation and membership 206 HOS Honorary Officers and Life Members 2013-14 207 Index to English names 208 3 Editorial It has given me great pleasure to return to the role of Bird Report Editor, which I carried out from 1979-1990, initially in a joint capacity and then solely from 1986, and again for one year only in 1996. Comparison of this new report with those earlier issues shows how much the digital age has allowed publishing to progress. That for 1979 contained a mere 60 pages with no illustrations or photographs. By 1996 the report had increased to 180 pages, including a sprinkling of vignettes by Dan Powell and David Thelwell, four pages of colour photographs and even two pages of advertisements! Since then HOS has increased its membership substantially which has given it the financial muscle to produce the full colour, large format bird report which you have in your hands today. However, that would not have been possible without the tremendous dedication and massive number of hours put in by my predecessor Alan Cox in editing and producing eleven reports from 2002-11. Under Alan’s leadership the report went from strength to strength in terms of the content, quality of the illustrations and photographs, and overall quality. Thus I would like to congratulate him on his nomination as an honorary life member of HOS, which is fully deserved. However, notwithstanding the quality of previous issues, I felt that as the new Editor it was my role to introduce some changes and innovations to the report. Within the Systematic List, there has been a deliberate move towards a narrative style at the expense of lists of records. In recognition that HOS members and other readers have a wide spectrum of expertise and knowledge of Hampshire birds and birding in general, I have included more interpretation of some of the records included. Previous reports included a large number of tables summarising the records of various species for the last ten years; these have now been excluded but it is hoped that they will appear in a records section of the HOS website in the near future. Some information has been removed from individual species accounts and presented in tabular form after the Systematic List. This includes counts from the Thames Basin and Wealden Heaths Breeding Bird Survey in Table 1 on page 161 and data from the BTO’s Breeding Bird Survey in Table 2 on page 162. Information from the BTO’s Garden BirdWatch has been included for the first time. Records from an astonishing 373 gardens are summarised in Table 3 on page 164, and sightings of some species such as Blackcap, Siskin and Reed Bunting have been incorporated into the species accounts. The Systematic List is preceded by Richard Carpenter’s Review of the Year which utilises a concise style to summarise the ornithological highlights of 2012 and where appropriate to link them to the weather conditions at the time.