The Aeshnid Dragonflies

 

I love Aeshnid Dragonflies. It was a love affair that probably began at Dungeness in 2010, when the big Aeshna mixta, Migrant Hawker dragonflies, provided me with excellent photography subjects and generally kept me entertained between counting passerines when I was doing my Undergraduate dissertation. I wondered at the speed at which they could climb and dive and turn, more than matching a Helicopter or a Swallow for aerial agility. I watched their hunting flights, the speed at which they could bring down insect prey small and large (ish), and how relaxed and complacent they would become when they perched up to eat and digest. I love the jewel markings like inset sapphires in their long, knitting-needle abdomens. I love their huge, wrap around compound eyes, affording a wide field of vision to spot prey and predator alike.

Aeshna juncea nomming a Speckled wood Butterfly. Isle of Mull, June 2014

These big insects are predators and no mistake. During their few short weeks on the wing they grab prey up to the size of large butterflies off the wing, and I have seen a Common Hawker (Aeshna juncea) eating a Speckled Wood Butterfly on a sunny June day on the Isle of Mull, completely unbothered by me and my camera lens, fixated on dismantling and hungrily devouring the smaller insect. They are hunters in their youth, too. A. juncea can spend a couple of years as a larva, in the small ponds in which it lives, hunting even small vertebrates like tadpoles and froglets, a veritable tiger among the pondweed. They can live at considerable latitudes, their growth limited by the low temperatures, while cogeners in Southern Europe can have several broods a year.  A. juncea is sometimes called the Moorland Hawker, for the Northern and Upland habitats in which it can thrive.

Migrant Hawker, Otmoor, Oxfordshire, August 2022

Aeshnids in the British Isles come in two genera, Aeshna, a name which Wikipedia claims might originate from a misprint, Aechma being ancient Greek for Spear, presumably in reference to their elongated shape and predatory nature, and Anax, from the ancient Greek for a king or leader, the emperor dragonflies. Both these genera are widely distributed around the globe. They are members of the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera, and now thought only distantly related to the similar, huge insects of Carboniferous palaeontology, though in the air they do appear true heirs to these prehistoric monsters. In adulthood all are predatory, and most are territorial, individuals patrolling stretches of hedgerow or pond side and tolerating no insect intruders.  Their larvae, called Nymphs, are, like other odonata, ambush predators, lurking in the pondweed and snatching passing water life. As large insects, they can take multiple years to mature.

Female Migrant Hawker, Essex, August 2022

In the Autumn, our most numerous Aeshnid here in Southern England is the Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta) which can be found, sometimes forming large groups of individuals, terrorising the little midges and such which gather in glades and on open rides, sometimes far from the water in which they started their lives. These groups can reach some numbers, and, unusually for dragonflies, they can be surprisingly tolerant of each other, seldom engaging in the high pursuit, rolling, dangerous territorial fights which seem to occupy a lot of time for other species. The Migrant Hawker only spends one year as a larva, emerging in late summer and early Autumn and remaining on the wing until mid-November where we are now.  It’s first segment is identified by a ‘golf-tee’ shaped marking. Sometimes a larger Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) appears, and menaces them. This beast, which once bred in our Essex garden pond, is substantially larger than the migrant hawker, and tolerates few rivals. Its abdomen is jewelled in Blue and Green.

Elderly Migrant Hawker being 'mobbed' by a Willow Emerald Damselfly. RSPB Rainham Marshes, Essex, October 2021

More recently, Southern England, and my home county of Essex in particular, has become a hotspot for a new Aeshnid. The Southern Migrant Hawker (Aeshna affinis) is increasingly common on the ditches and grazing marshes which line the Essex coast from the Thames to the Stour. This beauty has a thorax washed with blue over a base of green, and a vivid blue abdomen. Its segment one is marked with a ‘Deadpool mask’ marking, recalling the face of Marvel’s sweary superhero.  First identified in the county in 2007, my summer was full of these stunners, fighting and breeding over clubrush and reed lined ponds and ditches in July and August. By my understanding, how long the Essex population spends as a larva remains unclear, though it is probably one year, and this incredibly handsome invertebrate is one of climate change’s winners, locally at least, benefitting from the hotter summers.

Southern Migrant Hawker, Bower's Marsh, Essex, July 2022

In contrast, Brown and Norfolk Hawkers are relatively dull in colour, large and robust, the Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis) having brown flushed wings, and the Norfolk Hawker (Aeshna isosceles), now found much more widely in the UK than confined to Norfolk, though still considered rare and localised. The Norfolk Hawker has big, green eyes, and is relatively widespread in Continental Europe and North Africa. The Brown, which is large, has two pale diagonal stripes on its thorax and subtle blue eyes. It too is doing well, expanding its British range.

Emperor Dragonfly, male, Bowers' Marsh, Essex, July 2022

Though recently the Lesser Emperor (Anax parthenope) has been confirmed breeding in Southern England, for a long time the only Anax dragonfly in these islands has been the spectacular Emperor Dragonfly (A. imperator). This big, green and blue Dragon, by some measures the largest species in Britain, is common and familiar. I have witnessed them ovipositing in borrowdykes on the Essex marshes, and in city centre park ponds. The male has a solid, muted green thorax and a bright blue abdomen, distinctive by their size. They fly in high summer, into August, and range across much of the country.  

Southern Migrant Hawker, Essex, August 2022

Aeshnids form a most impressive family of insects.  Predators, aerobats extraordinaire, survivors and thrivers, wonders and jewelled terrors of freshwater bodies and their environs, nymph and adult. And even in November, it is not too late to see the distinctive shape of a Migrant Hawker, patrolling the hedgelines near you.

Poem for a Wicken Fen Hen Harrier, written back in 2017 or so.

 I wrote this some time ago, but felt it belonged here, so it at least continued existing somewhere. 

The wild and windswept marsh,

Frozen, in winters grip. Ice clings to the yellowed reeds.

The sun descends, warm orange light pierces the brown and grey

Vain hope of warmth, I clutch my thermos close, one hand on my bins

A barn owl ghosts the lodes, but my vigil continues

A cacophony in the reeds! Ducks and egrets take to the wing

And rush to flee the terror from the sky.

They saw her first. Their lives depend on being better birdwatchers than me.

She glides in low and fast, eyes scanning, held beneath high wings, dihedral.

Her tail banded, that patch of white. A ringtail!

I hold my breath. I watch.

She wasn't born and raised here, not here in Anglia's fens.

She belongs in the hills, traversing miles of purple heather.

Riding thermals, sky dancing with her mate, sleek and handsome, field grey

She belongs seizing meadow pipits on the wing

Hanging over Kinderscout, on her V-shaped wings, before plunging on a rabbit or a grouse.

She's the weathers refugee. A wild exile from the North.

I freeze, my breath caught in the air.

But here she finds warmth, and safety, and shelter from the gales.

Here she is safe, unlike the nervous ducks and moorhens she espies.

Beside the mobbing crows, or her bigger lowland cousins

That make the marsh their home, year round.

But, come the spring, when she leaves to make a home,

She runs the gauntlet of the waiting guns.

Poem for a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker I saw.

 Speed Poem for a female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.

With a nod to P/O John Gillespie McGee, 1922-41, who described a blue sky far better than I ever could, whose words are borrowed with credit and gratitude.

I gaze into the branches

Of Alders and twisted hornbeams

On a still and sun-drenched winter's day

A glimpse, at first

A nodding back, snow dappled

Pure brilliant, white emulsion flecked

High among the long denuded branches

You reveal yourself, small, elegant

Buff stained white crowned

Picked out against the sky

McGee's long delirious burning

Blue, still, you're winter at its gentlest

Stippled, bright black, ever nodding, busy in the branches

On the move, constant, keeping out the cold,

Up there, mild denizen of the treetops

Then dropping down, light as a butterfly

Parachuting on broad stippled wings

As beautiful as laughter

And out of sight, onto the next grub, the next meal, the next leafless coppice stand

Unreal, enthralled, my neck bent hard toward the sky

I look with longing

To the place where you used to be

A butterfly on Hawk Hardware.

 The long awaited gloom of a July evening on the West Country heaths as the extended summer day draws to a close. Though distant cars can still be heard they have faded into the ambience now, and I am alone on the earth. The damp, grey day of drizzle is giving way to still summer evening evening, though the sunset is still obscured by grey cloud. These conditions are not perfect, but they will suffice. I'd already been dazzled by the song of a Woodlark perched in one of the small birches which dot the heath, by scuttling Tiger Beetles among the eager blooms of Bell Heather, the Calluna yet to carpet the heath in purple. But there is one denizen of these South Western heaths that I am still waiting to see, waiting to hear. And now the light is fading and the distinct sound I am waiting for has not yet broken. I prepare to give up. Perhaps the weather is not good enough for this icon of warm scented summer nights. I dare to glance at my phone to check the England football result. It is good news. I sigh, irritated at how easily I am distracted. Where is my bird? I begin the walk back toward the car, noticing again the sound of traffic. 

It is as I stroll back that the sound creeps into my awareness. Distant at first, as if in my imagination. A growing, rising purr, perhaps if you had not heard it before you might think it an insect, a stridulating orthopteran of some description. It sounds a little like the tropical frogs you might have heard on nature documentaries, but far longer, uninterrupted, constant. It continues for minutes, rising and falling in volume, slowly but distinctly. The bird who is making it sits invisibly in a birch or one of the feral Scots Pines on the heath, slowly turning its head to project the sound around and about. Then, suddenly, quite unlike how it began, the sound stops. There is a quiet, single clap, and the bird is airborne before me against the sky. Its shape is almost raptor-like, long, pointed wings, a model of sleek grace, but its flight is nothing like a raptor, light, almost floaty, rapid changes of direction, recalling that of a Swallowtail butterfly over the Norfolk fens. A Nightjar! Anything but a Goatsucker, this long range migrant occupies a special place in the UK's avifauna. It is strictly nocturnal, and, by day, almost invisible, roosting stock still, a master of camouflage and concealment, either lengthways on a branch, or down on the ground among the heather. Folk myths give the bird its scientific name, Caprimulgus europaeus, the European Goatsucker. Pure slander, this insectivore has plainly never sucked a goat and never will. It flies like a butterfly with the body of a hawk, and any interest it has in livestock is strictly in the insects they attract and kick up when they move. Perhaps that is the bird's motivation when it approaches me closely, flying around me, and rising up in front of me to take a closer look, before, perhaps realising I have failed to live up to my purpose of attracting flies, he looses interest and flutters on into the rising darkness.

Nightjars are by no means confined to the West Country, though Aylesbeare Common in Devon, where I encountered them last summer, is a prime site for the species, as is lovely Arne in Dorset. They breed in Derbyshire, where their nest sites are kept somewhat quiet to prevent disturbance, and in Nottinghamshire, where they are a popular attraction at Budby Forest, part of Sherwood, as well as in Suffolk, the Brecks and on the Yorkshire Moors. They are, by the relative remoteness of their heathland habitat and their strictly nocturnal lifestyle, often overlooked and quite possibly under-recorded, though the loss of so much heathland over the passing decades has led to serious declines; and was once UK red listed, though it is now on the amber list, as sympathetic management has helped its fortunes. Go out for an evening stroll on open heath or moorland, or even in recently felled forestry habitats, and listen for the magical sound.

The European Nightjar is found in most of Europe and a swathe of central Eastern Asia during the breeding season, and it winters in sub-Saharan Africa. They are among the last Summer migrants to arrive in Spring, often not here until the second week in May. A stroll on the Early May bank holiday is too early, if you hope to catch sight or sound of one. They stay only a little later than the Swifts, and an evening stroll on the August bank holiday is likely to be a fortnight too late. By then they are on their way, flying by night through Europe, feeding and roosting in suitable habitat on the way. I encountered this bird in hand on my first day with the Hellenic Ornithological Society's ringing project on Antikythera in the Aegean. In hand they seem a different bird to the graceful creature on the wing, they have a huge gape, a massive pink maw with which they scoop up the moths and flies upon which they feed, and fringed with sensory whiskers. They have tiny legs, to closely grasp perches to better conceal their outline, and, while entirely without weapons, they hiss and gape, perhaps in imitation of a snake, when annoyed.

 Our Nightjar, Caprimulgus europeaeus, is one of a number of Nightjar species around the world, among the most spectacular is the Standard Winged Nightjar (Caprimulgus longipennis) in which the male trails long, modified feather  flag-tipped streamers behind his wings when he flies. He is resident in the savannahs of Sudan and Ethiopia. In Spain, the Red Necked Nightjar (C. ruficolis) can be found, looking remarkably similar to our, more Northerly species.  The scientific name Caprimulgus derives from the oft-repeated folk myth, that the Nightjar suckles from a goat, but the common name is appropriate, 'jar' being derived from 'churr' a description of the bird's haunting song.

Nightjar in hand in Antikythera, ringed, annoyed and shortly to be released to continue its journey. 

On my walk I enjoy the sound of the Nightjar multiple times, with several churring birds on several perches, and I almost miss a second close approach, within ten feet of my face, fumbling for my phone in the hope of capturing it on video for posterity, though I did record the bird cresting the heather, and its distinctive, buoyant flight.  I did get recordings of the sound and the floaty, butterfly-like flight over the gloomy heath, which I hope are available above if I understand Blogger's video uploading system. I had a truly extraordinary encounter, with a truly remarkable and very special bird. 

Gannets. Magnificent Gannets, and everything I know about them.

I recently returned from a trip to Lewis, in the Western Isles of Scotland, a land of plentiful seabird life. One species in particular seemed ubiquitous when scanning the open sea, I don't think, on the ferry crossing, I recall a moment when at least one white cruciform shape, on stiff black tipped wings, was not in view. We'd see them fishing in the bay at Ullapool, taking advantage perhaps of the clear, calm water to better pick out the shapes of fish, diving on swept back wings, a single point plunging like a spear into the sea. We'd see them following the boat crossing the Minch, or, in good numbers, following every passing fishing boat. And during our time on the island, though we saw many other seagoing birds while scanning the horizon, Gannets seemed to crop up every day. And well they might, these magnificent birds have shown a consistent, albeit slow increase in population over the past 30 years (JNCC), and while there are no colonies on Lewis itself, Sula skeir, which takes its name from the Old Norse for 'Gannet Island' hosts a substantial colony, some 42 miles North of the Island. Still more nest on that outermost of the Western Isles, St Kilda, and the birds are capable of undertaking fishing trips of up to 270 miles.

Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus), to give them their full English name, breed only in large colonies, with several of these scattered around the coasts of Northern and Western Britain. The largest is at Bass Rock in the Irish Sea, the largest on the UK Mainland, and also one of the most southerly, is at Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire coast (RSPB) an RSPB reserve, where, in contrast to many other seabirds, their numbers continue to rapidly increase. A birder I met during a recent visit to Bempton told me he could recall when Gannets were relatively scarce at this site. Now they cover huge swathes of cliff, and fill the sky. Their fat chicks loafed on clifftop nests, heads lolling awkwardly on the rocks, huge black bills with sagging skin. They are odd, ungainly, and so relaxed many of them could be mistaken for corpses, causing Natty and I had brief anxious moments when we first beheld them in their clifftop domain. Gannet nestlings have a curious habit of looking dead when they are sleeping. Adults were constantly on the move, early in the season they could be seen ripping up grass from the clifftops to build their nests, or moving out to sea gathering fish to feed their chicks growing appetites. Non breeding juveniles share these clifftop nest sites, perhaps to learn the way of life of the colony, to observe the feeding behaviour of the adults, and learn the best fishing grounds.

Gannets are, despite their positive population trend, which defies that of almost all other British seabirds, Amber Listed by the RSPB, though the IUCN and Europe both consider the species 'Least Concern'. Though numerous and increasing, they really are almost entirely confined to large colonies, of several thousand breeding pairs. The nests in the colonies are surprisingly evenly spaced, typically just outside pecking distance, and peck, when faced with an intruder, they do indeed, with surprising brutality, comparable perhaps to Gulls and quite unlike more 'genteel' species like Auks. Wandering Gannet chicks have been seen killed by their neighbours when straying too far from their nests (Nicholson). Sometimes they even peck their partners when they arrive back from fishing trips, before pair recognition occurs and they bond again with noisy displays of bill rubbing, which Adam Nicholson describes as a kind of play fighting. They make very good parents, with two out of every three chicks fledging successfully.

The reasons for their bucking the seabird trend is unclear, but they are adaptable, and more than happy to follow the fishing boats and grab any discards, something they do in impressive numbers. From the shores of Lewis seldom did a fishing boat pass by without a small cloud of white crosses following it. The tourist boat from Bridlington in Yorkshire makes spectacular use of this ability, throwing fish overboard when passing the big colony at Bempton, attracting an enthusiastic following of Gannets.  The ability to feed on a range of pelagic fish of different sizes,  rather than be limited to Sandeels like the struggling Auks, probably makes them relatively resilient to local changes, as does the ability to travel many miles in order to catch them, though as to their breeding colonies they display some considerable fidelity to their fishing grounds during the breeding season. Gannets hunt by plunge diving from heights of about 25 metres, sweeping their wings back, their shape transforming into that of a short spear as they dive into the water, either siezing prey just below the surface, or, remarkably, powering down to depths of 30 metres or so, propelled on folded in wings, turning those supreme works of natural aeronautical engineering into simple paddles.  Their heads and necks are powerful and reinforced in order to survive the impact, and serrations on the insides of their bills grasp the fish they catch.

Gannets have relatively few predators. Among their predators is man, with the colony at Sula Skeir attracting a group of licenced commercial hunters from Ness, near Lewis' Northernmost point, to kill a limited number of juveniles every year. Though it does not seem to affect the Gannet's conservation status, and I'll not dwell on this too much, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty To Animals (SPCA) have described the hunt as 'Barbaric' and called for a ban. I am drawn to agree with them.  Also among their enemies at sea are Great Skuas, which occasionally kill but more commonly just rob Gannets of their hard won food, and White Tailed Eagles, which are considered important predators of Gannets on the coasts of Norway, where both species are common.

 

There are more than one species of Gannet around the globe. The Cape Gannet (Morus capensis), often featured in documentaries about such phenomena as the Sardine Run, is distinguished from the Northern, our sort of Gannet, by the extensive of black on the tail and primaries. It breeds on six islands off the coasts of South Africa and Namibia, and is considered Endangered by the IUCN. The Australasian Gannet (M. serrator) is common and widespread, and increasing, along the temperate Southern coasts of Australia and New Zealand. The dramatically marked Boobies of Equatorial regions are slightly more distant relatives, retaining the generic name Sula.  The Northern Gannet colonies around the British Isles are globally important, hosting as much as 55% of their global breeding population, and they can be seen, while sea watching, almost anywhere, especially in the Spring and Autumn, and at their colonies, of which Bempton is probably the most visited and most accessible, and, for me, something of an annual pilgrimage. There are not just Gannets to be seen there, but Puffins, Guillemots, Fulmars, Kittiwakes and others, as well as fantastic cliff views. They hang about there well into August, though the site is best visited from April to June for the full show. The photos here were all taken on a recent visit to Bempton, at the beginning of August, where the presence of the Black Browed Albatross, which eluded me, offered me the excuse to head down there and enjoy avian spectacle and some twitcher camaraderie.

Above all, I find Gannets stunningly beautiful. Sharp, pointed, and profoundly wild, but equally stunningly elegant. They are the largest seabirds regularly found around Britain, though their colonies occasionally attract even bigger guests in the form of lost Albatrosses which have ended up on the wrong side of the equator. Their pure brilliant white body feathers, those jet black primaries, the warm yellow ochre of the neck and head, their graceful, long winged glide as they pass by in their small bands, often incorporating both adults and black feathered juveniles. I love the joy of their pair bonding displays. And I find them somewhat hopeful, a rare success story among the troubled guild of piscivorous seabirds of the North Western Atlantic.

Great White Egrets

 I stood in a hide, at the RSPB's splended Ham Wall nature reserve in Somerset, in view of Glastonbury Tor, that small tower sat atop a hill overlooking the Somerset Levels, the marshes of Avalon, alleged stamping ground of King Arthur and his Knights, where Pagan Britons and Christian Anglo-Saxons apocryphally made play for the heart and soul of what we now call England. A mighty bird stood in front of me, just metres away, filling the 75-250mm lens of my camera, all in white, bill turning from black to yellow, fishing, preening with an air of magisterial indifference. The bird stood tall, the shape of a skinny Grey Heron, or an albino woodpigeon with a snake threaded through it, wearing stilts. It stepped forward, creeping, and stared at the water, with the suggestion of intent, before continuing to preen itself.  When noisier people entered the hide, it flew away, low across the water to a new position behind the reeds.

This experience would have been unheard of a few decades ago. First recorded in Britain in the mid 19th Century, though possibly with a history here going back much further, the Great White Egret was a scarce vagrant, less than annual until the 1990s, then annual wintering, I saw my first in 2010, at Dungeness in Kent, where a wintering bird, earning the universal Great White Egret nickname of 'Sharky,' had taken up home in a far flung reedbed. It was little more than a speck in my scope, the size of the bird, its height against the reeds, and its bright yellow bill (which turns black in the breeding season) making it unmistakeable. Great White Egrets are sometimes considered confusable with Little Egrets, but in reality I find them more confusable with a swan, on account of their huge scale in comparison with the more familiar of our two white herons. If you think you might have seen a Great White Egret, you haven't. You have seen a Little Egret. If you see a Great White Egret, you know what you have seen.

My next encounter with the species was in Greece, where I worked as a volunteer for the Hellenic Ornithological Society. A flock of 30 'Sharkies' had dropped into the brackish water marsh, cleared out from their breeding grounds, looking for somewhere to spend the winter. I watched in wonder as they stood stock still in the mirror still water, harbingers of a changing season. Southern and Eastern Europe once held the nearest surviving Great White Egrets. Once common in much of Central Europe, Great White Egrets, like so many charismatic wetland species, were victims of persecution as competitors for fish, and of the millinery trade in the 19th and early 20th century, pushing the centre of their European population East, with birds shot off their nests in the breeding season for their showy breeding plumes, a bold fashion statement for a Victorian lady to wear on her hat. The species has a wide distribution spanning five continents, and many North American colonies of Great Whites faced similar persecution. It was seeing the fate of these birds on their nests which spurred into action the ladies who went on to found both  the RSPB and the Audobon Society, whose campaigns eventually saw the species have something of a repreive, on both sides of the Atlantic.  So it was from Southern and Eastern Europe that the species began to spread.

In 2012, the species bred in the UK for the first time, on the Somerset Levels, at Shapwick Heath, a stones' throw from my Great White Egret experience. In 2017 it bred in Norfolk. Its breeding population continues to grow, and all these breeding attempts have involved small colonies of multiple pairs, on stick nests in trees, not dissimilar to Herons and Little Egrets. In January this year, one flew over my house in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, easily distinguished from a little egret by the sharp bend in its neck, protruding like a keel, and by its vast size and yellow bill like a sword. I have seen them standing in the fields by the Derwent of a morning with the Grey Herons, presumably joining them in munching any small mammals driven from cover by the intense winter cold. Several pairs breed at Shapwick Heath, and it was the most numerous Heron I saw at Ham Wall, and they winter up and down the country, including at Attenborough in Nottinghamshire, where their flights to roost are a popular sideshow to the spectacular winter Starling murmurations.

The Great White Egret is doing well. And I wholeheartedly approve.  Within minutes of its departure, no sooner than the hide was quiet again, my Great White Egret was back, ducks herding their broods away into the reeds with justified concern, and back to preening, nonchalantly, at home in this place of Arthurian legend.

A chain of thought regarding Transatlantic differences, Duck Stamps and the RSPB.

 In the American Meme group I have now left, there was a lot of talk of hunting funds for conservation, through levies such as the so-called 'Duck Stamps.' Duck stamps are a type of hunting licence issued in the USA, the money raised being used to fund the National Wildlife Refuges scheme. Doubtless it is a very important stream of revenue for wetland conservation in the USA. On the meme group, there was an assertion that this money from hunting is the only, or the primary way to fund conservation, and as such the whole 'Hunting is conservation' argument came about. It was a collision of many ideas, with the pro-hunt side, which was most of the Americans, using the mantra 'Hunting is conservation,' and explaining how 'Duck stamps' funded the national refuge system and how wildfowling was fundamental to wetland conservation. So determined were the American conservationists to defend this system, that their enthusiasm for it seemed to trump concerns raised by European group members about hunting in this region and in North Africa, which were angrily dismissed as outliers.

Now I am about to compare hunting in the USA to Hunting in the UK or in Europe, not right at the moment at least. But another thought occurred to me shortly afterwards. Soon there were more posts in the Meme group, referring to how birders never invest any money in wetland conservation, refuse to pay to access reserves, that only hunting has the clout, and the public participation, to raise money for conservation to be carried out effectively. And, thought I, that is where we differ.

Water Rail at RSPB Rainham Marshes

In Britain, while for sure there are wildfowl hunters, and for sure they look after some coastal wetlands, much of it fairly well, such that it provides good breeding habitat for waders, raptors and invertebrates outside the shooting season, but the way we look after Wetland 'refuges' for conservation is thus: The RSPB, and the local Wildlife Trusts.

Stonechat at RSPB Rainham Marshes

Conservationists in the UK, by which I mean non-professionals who care about and support nature conservation, do not generally buy hunting licences. Instead, they join the RSPB, investing sums comparable with those spent on 'Duck Stamps' in the USA. We do spend money on nature, and on nature for nature's sake. And we have achieved remarkable results through this. Minsmere in Suffolk, owned by the RSPB, is a former MOD range, and it was the stepping stone Avocets and Marsh Harriers used to recolonise the UK. Now Marsh Harriers, and Bearded Tits, breed at Rainham Marshes, another former military range within Greater London. Spoonbills and Bitterns have bred at Fairburn Ings, a former coal mining site near Leeds. At Old Moor near Doncaster, Slavonian Grebes breed annually, and Lakenheath Fen, a former carrot farm in the Brecks, Bittern, Bearded Tit and Common Crane breed, a species which was extinct in Britain a century ago. All without money from hunting, with management largely built on monthly and annual donations from a million members. The RSPB is our model of conservation and it works.

Lapwing at RSPB Frampton Marsh, Lincolnshire

It coexists with free markets, taking from the state only money available to any landowners who manage their land sympathetically for nature, and heritage money from the National Lottery. It has brought back species to these islands, and become a global expert in wetland creation and restoration without shots being fired in sport at all. Its predator control is not above criticism, of course and some regard it as unduly friendly with shooting organisations, as illustrated by the debacle at RSPB Strumpshaw Fen a few years ago, where gamekeepers were allowed onto the site to kill some much photographed foxes. However it walks a tightrope here of course and deserves, in my view, some slack. There are people in the shooting community, unnerved by the RSPB's excellent work in raptor protection, who love to stir the pot and set their opponents, in mainstream conservation and largely urban hippy 'animal rights' proponents, against each other, despite their common cause at least where it comes to threatened wildlife and habitats.

View from RSPB Wallasea Island, Essex

But its achievements at a national level are remarkable. Incredible. It is our model of conservation, Britain's proof that hunting and conservation are not inextricably linked, and I think that is bloody awesome. They go beyond land management of course, into campaigning, recently becoming involved in the discussion surrounding the draconian restrictions on environmental protest being discussed in parliament, and campaigning against particularly damaging developments threatening important wildlife sites. Their membership is huge and diverse.

Goldfinch at RSPB Frampton Marsh, Lincolnshire

Compared to what they have in other parts of the world, we are extraordinarily fortunate to have the RSPB, and can be justifiably proud of it, alongside the county Wildlife Trusts and the WWT of course.