As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 18 September 2015

Turtle doves are in decline but now an MEP could help save them

By Cambridge News | Posted: September 16, 2015

The RSPB's Rupert Masefield tells how there's a new advocate working to help an endangered bird clinging on here.

When I'm not at work, I like to spend as much of my free time as possible exploring the countryside around East Anglia and I feel privileged to have had some pretty special (in my view) wildlife experiences: seeing and listening to singing skylarks soaring above farmland, and watching reed warblers flitting back and forth from their nest deep in the reeds while I paddled past in my canoe this summer.

But my forays into the countryside in search of nature this summer have also brought disappointment. This year, I haven't seen or heard a single solitary turtle dove, let alone two of them. And this is a bird that used to fill the countryside with its colourful appearance and soothing call.

Admittedly, I haven't made a special trip to one of the few remaining sites where there are known to be turtle doves breeding, but isn't it worrying that I should have to make such an effort to see a bird that 50 years ago bred here in its hundreds of thousands?



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