Brian's Nature Diary for April 2008
If you want to gain some idea of the changes taking place in town and countryside over the past decades, I suggest you can do no better than look at how our five species of pigeons have fared.
Take the wood pigeon for example. Go back to the Victorian era, and it was not at all common. Responding to our ever-expanding planting of cereal and other crops, which provided it with food; and the widespread planting of conifers, which gave it somewhere safe to sleep and to nest; and a population explosion began which has continued down to this day.
Some experts tell us that the wood pigeon is now our commonest bird. Not in numbers perhaps, but in sheer bulk. I can well believe this, having just watched one of them rapidly hoovering up an entire large slice of wholemeal bread, home baked of course. The sight of it waddling across the lawn like the proverbial drunken sailor, before rising on wildly clapping wings, was one to behold.
The smaller collared dove, mainly brown rather than grey, and much more slightly built, is also very much a garden bird. There can be few of us who do not see it almost on a daily basis. Yet it was unknown to these islands before the 1950’s. Some of the first ones were spotted by a Norfolk postman in 1955. An important book on ‘The Popular Handbook of Rarer British Birds’, published at that time, was only able to record them as a stop press item, so recent was their discovery. Yet less than a decade later their colonization of Britain was largely complete.
No-one seems sure of what caused their phenomenal spread, first across the Middle East, then into and across all of Europe. Some suspect that climate change may be implicated, Only a year or two ago I counted more than a hundred of them in the flock at the former dairy farm across the way from where I live.
The stock dove is slightly smaller than the wood pigeon, is similarly coloured, but lacks any of the white of the larger bird. Its population may be about the same as that of the wood pigeon in the early 1800’s, in other words about half a million birds. Despite Dave’s constant denial a couple of pairs nest in the lime avenue close to where we live. I often hear their subdued but distinctive cooing from the tracery of twigs up above.
The town pigeon is descended from the wild rock dove, which still ekes out an existence on some of our coastal cliffs. It must have colonized the artificial cliffs of our towns and cities through escapes from pigeon lofts. It occurs in a wide range of patterns and colours, but the wild form is mainly grey with a prominent white rump. Regarded as a pest by many of our town elders, it still manages to do very nicely, thank you. I remember many years ago, when I traveled into the town centre to my job, a large crowd of hangers-on, including collared doves, town pigeons, black-headed gulls, but only the occasional wood pigeon, would gather outside the baker’s shop. From the surrounding trees in the churchyard they would wait for the delivery van. It was the driver’s habit to sweep out his van after making his delivery, and this provided a daily bonanza that was too good to miss, especially in the winter.
Finally, and sadly, the turtle dove. Prettiest and smallest of our pigeons, it alone is a summer resident, flying in annually from southern Europe and north Africa to set up home in areas of scrub and woodland. I say sadly because in my lifetime I have seen it go from being a common sight in summer to being a rarity. Ornithologists tell us that its decline nationally has been something like 90%. In some areas it has become locally extinct. The causes seem likely to be many. They include changes in its winter homelands, and especially the clearing of formerly suitable habitat over here. As with all these species climate change may well be implicated.
TIP OF THE MONTH: Keep feeding the birds. They may not visit your feeders so often during the warmer months. For sure there is going to be better food out there! But hungry parents, worn to a frazzle by the demands of hungry offspring, will be grateful for the occasional beakful snatched between bouts of feeding them. |
