Natural England has announced that it is revoking three General Licences for controlling wild birds, as of Thursday 25th April 2019.

What does this mean?
These licences have been used to kill wild birds, covering 16 species of birds including some of the crow family, Canada goose, some gulls and pigeons.  These licences were introduced to allow the legal control of certain species "...to protect public health and safety, prevent serious damage and protect plants and wildlife". However, the licensing regime was often abused and been subject to a recent legal challenge.

The risks to adders are multiple - they are in danger from mechanical cutting of vegetation and overgrazing which reduced the cover they need.  Adders often hibernate together and are site-faithful, returning to the same hibernation site year after year - this can make them vulnerable to the loss of such sites and potentially the loss of a whole adder population at the same time.

In my view, there is an urgent need to increase the protection conferred to adders, which at the moment receive limited protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

The monitoring study was undertaken by the Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK (ARG UK) through the ‘Make the Adder Count’ project, a citizen science survey to monitor adder populations across the UK, and published in association with Reading University. 
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Somehow, all of a sudden, January has passed effortlessly into February, which in turn has morphed into March, which can only mean that ecology surveys will start to pick up in frequency.

It has been a bit of an odd winter - the mildness has been noticeable, with a few frosts but relatively little snowfall in our little corner of rural Suffolk.  At this time last year, we were getting blasted by the 'Beast from the East' which had a noticeable effect on delaying spring for much of our wildlife.

At Huckle Ecology, the winter has been busy.... there have been a steady flow of preliminary ecological assessments, usually to inform planning applications. These include an extended Phase 1 Habitat survey, and aim to identify the potential ecological constraints and whether more detailed surveys for protected species such as bats, reptiles and great crested newts are required.  In addition, we have had wintering bird surveys to complete, involving surveys of an area to identify the use of that land by birds during winter.

But now, attention turns to spring and at the end of March, the first breeding bird surveys are already in the schedule.  Many species are already actively seeking nest sites at the moment, and fully engaged in courtship and territorial behaviour - evidenced in our garden by the toing and froing of at least 4 male blackbirds all competing for our patch of choice shrubbery!

Last winter was pretty busy - for an ecologist it is a time to catch up with admin and various tasks that have been put off from the hectic survey season.  It is also a time to catch up with report writing and getting up to date with long term projects.
However, last winter, the office based tasks were interrupted on a regular basis by the need to undertake wintering bird surveys for a number of sites.  Typically, these involve regular visits to a potential development site to record the use of teh site during the winter months.  Usually these involve monthly visits, although surveys may need to be more frequent and involve survey visits at dawn or dusk (or even occasionally at night) at sites that support wintering species from designated sites.
On a personal level, such site visits are really valuable in understanding how sites are used by bids during winter, and can provide useful information about the movement of wintering flocks of waders such as lapwing or golden plover.

It is good to start thinking about these now as migrating birds in particular are starting to arrive already.