West Midland Bird Club West Stunning Staffordshire – right on your doorstep! 20082008 Here at Blithfield, the scenery matches the fishing – both a real treat. Escape to a well-deserved day out on water or land. Day tickets give you the chance to fish at the Midlands’ top trout site, or splash out and take an annual membership. Choose from a pitch on 11 miles of bank, or hire one of our powered boats and get out on the water. At the end of the day, you can take away some of your catch for the freshest of fish suppers! If you prefer dry land, take a stroll through the woodlands on Blithfield Estate. Taking in stunning views across the Reservoir, the specially created footpaths cross much of the 2,350 acre Estate and are a wildlife lover’s paradise, teeming with birds, trees, flora and insect life. Access to the footpaths and car Annual Report No. 75 parking are free of charge. Visit Blithfield and you’ll leave behind the stresses of every day life. And it’s right on your doorstep! For more information, visit: www.blithfield.com 2008 www.blithfield.com 7575 The Birds of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and the West Midlands 2008 Annual Report 75 Editor D.W. Emley Published by West Midland Bird Club 2010 Published by West Midland Bird Club © West Midland Bird Club 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 permission of the copyright owners. The West Midland Bird Club is a registered charity No. 213311. Website: http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/ ISSN 1476-2862 Printed by Healeys Printers Ltd., Unit 10, The Sterling Complex, Farthing Road, Ipswich, Suffolk IP1 5AP. Price £9.00 The Birds of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and the West Midlands 2008 Annual Report 75 Contents 4Editorial 6 Submission of Records 7 Birds and Weather in 2008 15 Systematic List 230 Ringing in 2008 235 Satellite-tagged Hen Harrier from Bowland winters in Tame Valley 237 Berry Hill by the Seasons – Past and Present 241 Bird Ringing at Belvide – an overview 244 The decline of the Red Grouse Lagopus lagopus in Staffordshire 247 County Lists 254 Gazetteer 264 List of Contributors 269 Index of Species Front Cover Photograph: Common Redstart on Cannock Chase, Steve Seal 3 Editorial Look at any field guide or, indeed, our Annual Report, and you will see that the families of birds are laid out in a particular order. Newcomers may find this sequence strange and illogical but it is not. The idea of the sequence is to convey relationships between families and the degree of evolutionary advancement with the most primitive species first and the most advanced last. The sequence order reflects the thinking at the time and, as ideas have changed, so too has the arrangement of species. Look at the sequence used in Witherby’s Handbook (1938) based on that proposed by Dr. Hartert and it is quite unlike that with which we are familiar. It starts with Passerines and ends with Game Birds. Even that was at odds with the sequence proposed by Alexander Wetmore in vogue at the time but at least that had Divers first and Buntings at the end – something with which we are more familiar today. Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (1965) used a sequence of bird families that is similar to that we are used to starting with divers but ending with starlings, orioles and crows rather than buntings. In his field guide Peterson bemoaned the lack of agreement, at least in Europe, on a definitive order of families! For many years, apart from placing the finches and buntings at the end, there was little change in the order of families. In 2004 the divers were moved to sit after gamebirds, putting swans first. Then there was the raising of some subspecies to full species status e.g. Caspian and Yellow-legged Gull. This was followed by the raising of some sub-genera to genus status e.g. the splitting of Parus (tits) into Poecile, Parus, Periparus and Cyanistes and the splitting of Larus (gulls) into Larus, Xema, Chroicocephalus and Hydrocoloeus. These changes were all minor “tinkering” and didn’t alter the order of the families. Recent advances in DNA studies have, however, revolutionised our ideas of family and species relationships; so much so, that the BOURC has brought out a new checklist. Changes this time largely affect the passerines, with some radical, and at first sight surprising, alterations. For instance wagtails and pipits now come between sparrows and finches. Warblers follow the hirundines with thrushes and chats after them. The fact that Long-tailed Tit is no longer with the other tits but comes after Cetti’s Warbler and that Spotted and Pied Flycatchers are now separated may take some getting used to! The Club has always followed the BOURC’s lead on taxonomy and in this Report we show the species in their new order. Thank goodness we now have an index! Thanks are due to Brian Stretch who retired as County Recorder for Worcestershire in 2010 and I am grateful to him for managing to finish the 2008 Report in time. Thanks also to Steven Payne who takes over from Brian as County Recorder for Worcestershire. We wish him well in that role. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those who helped with this year’s report. I am especially grateful to all those who contributed records, especially those sending in valuable census data; to John Harris, Colin McShane, Steve Turner and Derek Yalden for their articles; to Bert Coleman for another fascinating Ringing Report and to artists and photographers Phil Jones, John Judge, Dave Kelsall, Steve Seal, Dave Taylor and Steve Valentine for making their work available; and above all to the County Recorders and their teams: Warwickshire: Jonathan Bowley Worcestershire: Brian Stretch, Report Writers & Compilers; Brian Stretch, Andy Warr and Edward Lea, Rarities Committee; Brian Stretch, Andy Warr, Dave Walker, Gavin Peplow, Rob Prudden and Terry Hinett. Staffordshire: Nick Pomiankowski, Report Writers; NDP, Neil Carter and Andy Lawrence, Rarities Committee; Steve Nuttall, ,Bernard Smith, Mark Sutton and Steve Turner and Site Report Compilers; Richard Berry, Mike Boote, Graham Evans, Frank Gribble, Pete Jordan, Steve Nuttall, Ray Perry, Brenda Scott; Data Input and proof reading; NDP, Mary Holley. West Midlands: Kevin Clements. I would like to thank Mike Gaydon of Healeys and my wife Sue, for her support and help during the compilation of this report. I would also like to thank South Staffs Water who, through their advertisement on the back cover, have contributed to its production. David Emley 5 Submission of Records All contributors are asked to follow the guidelines set out in the booklet A Checklist of the Birds of the West Midlands and a Guide to Status and Record Submission (second edition 1989). A copy of these can be found on our website http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com. All records should be sent to the relevant County Recorder as soon as possible after observation. Concise, though adequate, field descriptions (including how the species was identified, the circumstances of the sighting and the observer’s experience of the species) should accompany records of all species – marked as A in the Details column of the checklist. In addition, descriptions are required for all out-of-season migrants, unusual hybrids and scarce sub-species, including Scandinavian Rock Pipit, Blue-headed and other flava race wagtails, White Wagtail (autumn only), Black-bellied Dipper, Greenland Wheatear and Chiffchaff races. The lack of an acceptable description may lead to records being rejected. Records should be sent to the appropriate County recorder: Warwickshire Jonathan Bowley 17 Meadow Way, Fenny Compton, Southam, Warwickshire CV47 2WD [email protected] Worcestershire Steven Payne 6 Norbury Close, Redditch, B98 8RP [email protected] Staffordshire Nick Pomiankowski 22 The Villas, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 5AQ [email protected] West Midlands Kevin Clements 26 Hambrook Close, Dunstall Park, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, WV6 0XA [email protected] Ringing Secretary All ringing recoveries and sightings of colour-marked birds should be sent to: A E Coleman, 67 Park Lane, Bonehill, Tamworth, Staffs, B78 3HZ. Records can be sent electronically as Excel, Word, CSV or RTF files or on record slips. These are available from the Club Secretary (address inside back cover) at indoor meetings or a copy can be downloaded from our web site: http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/. Another alternative that is proving very popular is the BTO’s BirdTrack website http://www.bto.org.uk/birdtrack/. Data entered here can be accessed, with permission, by the County Recorder, thus obviating the need to send in slips etc. D W Emley, 23 Leacroft, Stone, Staffs, ST15 8GF [email protected] 6 Birds and Weather 2008 A total of 234 species was recorded in the Region in 2008 cf. 242 in 2005, 239 in 2006 and 228 in 2007. Of this total there were no additions to the Regional list but Staffordshire had its first European Bee-eater, Worcestershire its first American Wigeon and Warwick - shire its second European Bee-eater after the first in 1886. In addition, Mediterranean Gull bred for the first time in Staffordshire (after an unsuccessful attempt in 2007) and Black-headed Gull in the West Midlands. January began rather mild but overcast. Birds remaining from 2007 included Lesser Scaup at Draycote, Red-throated Diver and Black Redstart at Blithfield, two Great Northern Divers at Chasewater, six Wood Larks at Nochard, a Water Pipit at Grimley and a total eight Firecrests across the region.