Contents:

Keith Crees
Group Leaders Review
AGM
Treasurer's Report
Dorset Weekend
Coach trips
Evening Meetings
Coffee Morning and Sale
Wanted !
The Stour Estuary Reserve its Birds, Their Problems
Wildlife Explorers
A Winter with the Birds Down Under
A Day's Birdwatching in Bulgaria
World Birdwatch Day

Keith Crees

The committee wishes to express a heartfelt tribute to Keith Crees for his period as Group Leader and for his prior service to the committee over a total of 15 years. Keith's combined knowledge of birdlife and the policies of the RSPB is unique within the group and he is universally respected by the committee and our group's members. Keith has also been a significant contributor of group donations, largely as a result of talks that he gives to other societies in the Southend area. His generous, energetic and inspiring commitment will be a noticeable loss.

We all hope to see Keith at our future meetings and field trips so that we can continue to enjoy his company and wildlife knowledge, and the committee also hopes that it can continue to seek Keith's advice for long into the future.

Thank you Keith.

On a personal note, I am very much in debt to Keith for his encouragement, enthusiasm and forward vision in regard to our website. Without Keith's support our website would never have got off the ground and would not have developed in the way that it has today. I would like to say a big thank you to Keith for his approval and support and especially for his kind words in the early days of the website and, with this in mind, I would like to dedicate the future of our website to Keith . Web Author.

Group Leaders Review

Southend Group's other activities continued as normal and, thanks to Peter Hirst's efforts, we enjoyed an excellent indoor programme of talks which were very well attended. Although, because of foot and mouth outbreak, our coach trip to Pulborough had to be cancelled Cath Williams was still able to run three other successful trips. Without a fundraiser on the committee this area was again low key but we are still able to make a donation to the RSPB. The Treasurer will give details in his report.

As usual there are many whom I have to thank for their contribution in keeping the Group afloat over past year. Graham's website has raised the profile of Southend Members' Group and attracted new members. Behind the scenes Stephen has managed our finances very professionally, a hefty task which takes a lot of commitment. It is not possible to list all those who have contributed but, on behalf of the membership, very many thanks to you all. Finally, this being my final review, I would like to express my special thanks to committee members, both past and present, who have given me their invaluable support over the past few years.

Keith Crees, Group Leader

AGM

The AGM will be held on 3 September 2001, the formalities will be followed by a talk on Peru given by Chris Durdin. Please come and give your support and have a say on the future of our group.

Keith Crees will be standing down as group leader. At present we do not have a volunteer to replace him, it is imperative that a new leader is found before the AGM. Any member who feels that they could help, even for a limited period, please contact any member of the Committee and discuss this.

Joy and John Verrall will stand for election to the committee in the RSPB Sales post.

Treasurer's Report

Stephen Anderson, May 2001

2000- 2001 has achieved an income only a little inferior to 1999 -2000, despite the coffee morning being poorly attended and continuing concern over coach trip income. The committee can therefore release a total of £1,843 to assign to an RSPB project of their choice (see update below), as opposed to last year's donation of £2,020.

THE RSPB CHARITY ACCOUNT

The Charity Account has generated a surplus of £1,513.63, allowing us to make a donation to an RSPB project next season of £1,600.00 (the same as last year). The meetings have been entirely self-supporting (from entrance fees, refreshments and raffle), aided by a reduction in speaker costs compared with last year. As for fund-raising, the coffee morning in October remained the highlight (£358.91) despite disappointing attendance as a result of inclement weather.

Joy and John Verrall volunteered during the year to take up the role of RSPB sales co-ordinators. Sales have been £692.89 and generated £243.00 of profit.

THE GROUP'S SOCIAL ACCOUNT

The Social Account made a surplus of £151.50, as the Barnes coach trip was very well supported. Since then the Minsmere trip has had excellent support too, but the committee remains concerned about the viability of our coach trips. I have therefore decided to keep funds back to cover next season's coach trips rather than make a donation from our Social account.

SUMMARY

We go into the 2001 - 2002 season with some uncertainty about the future, with a fall in membership year on year and concern regarding the group leader position. However our financial position seems stable and puts us in a good position to build the group up again if further volunteers step forward.

UPDATE

The Committee have made a donation of £1,843 to Old Hall Marshes Reserve.

Coach Trips

Our coach trip season started last October in a watery way with the Ouse Washes which were definitely awash. Barnes Wildfowl & Wetland Trust in February proved to be a popular and interesting location, we'll certainly make another visit perhaps in two years time. Pulborough had to be cancelled due to "foot and mouth" but we eventually managed to get to North Warren and Minsmere. North Warren was marvellous and the sound of the skylarks, sedge warblers and nightingales just breathtaking. Most of us saw the bittern at Minsmere and some saw the Osprey.

For the 2001-2 season we've rebooked Pulborough and Minsmere. West Stow and Lackford reserve was rewarding two years ago so we are making a return visit. Hickling Broad has some new hides and the optional relaxing boat trip through the reed beds gives an inside view of the secret life of the reserve.

As requested by the committee, I've obtained several quotes from coach companies. Coach hire is very expensive but all the quotes were similar. We are keeping to last years prices per person for the coming season. A few more people on each trip will keep the prices down and even reduce them, so do consider joining us on our enjoyable days out. Thank you to everyone who supports the outings.

Cath Williams - Coach Outings Secretary

Evening Meetings

My first season as Indoor Meetings Secretary seems to have passed without any hiccups. All the speakers seem to have been well received judging by attendances. Dave Cotteridge attracted a full house for "Autumn on the Scilly Isles". In fact, we nearly ran out of chairs as the council seemed to have removed some. We seem to have uncovered a little gem in Mickey Andrews from Billericay who showed some stunning slides from the Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan. He was enthusiastic and knew his subject.

Our season 2001-2002 starts with the AGM on 3 September with a presentation "Impressions of Peru" by Chris Durdin who is a RSPB staff member based at the East Anglian Regional office in Norwich.

For October we cross to the Caribbean for "Wildlife of Trinidad and Tobago" by Geoff Gibbs, last here in 1995 - should be a colourful evening.

November sees the rescheduled presentation by Brenda Holcombe - "Birds of New Zealand and it's Sub Antarctic Islands".

For December we return to Europe with wildlife photographer and tour leader Roy Croucher presenting "Birds of Northern France". This is a postponed visit from 2000.

Year 2002 starts in the cold climes of Alaska with David Tipling, professional wildlife photographer and author presenting "Bird Journeys - Pribilof Islands in Alaska and Emperor Penguins in the Antarctic". David was last here in 1994.

February sees a new speaker to the group, Chris Ward, who takes us from John O'Groats to Land's End.

March sees us back in the Caribbean with another new speaker, Chris Bradshaw, who will take us "Birding in the Caribbean - Dominican Republic and Cuba". Chris was born and lives in Kent and is currently a freelance bird tour leader, photographer and lecturer.

For the April meeting it's a return of Ann and Bob Scott who will take us on a "European Birdwatching Spectacular". Until their retirement in 1997, they were employed by the RSPB as Senior Wildlife Advisor and Head of Reserves Management respectively.

The seasons meetings finish on the 13 May with the return of the popular local speaker, Bob Glover who will present "The Year on the Estuary".

I hope the above list will tempt some members who for one reason or another were unable to attend last season.

The speakers for season 2002-2003 have already been booked and on the face of it looks like another . interestmg season.

Peter Hirst - Indoor Meeting Secretary

THE STOUR ESTUARY RESERVE ITS BIRDS, THEIR PROBLEMS

The Stour Estuary as a whole supports huge numbers of waterbirds. Thanks to a very reliable team of twenty or so volunteer counters we have comparable data going back to the late 60s. These counts carried out as part of the Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) have identified the Stour as one of the top twenty-five estuaries in Britain for birds, with a mean of 47,960 waterbirds being present annually over the five winters 1994/5 - 1998/9. Of these, the principle species is the black-tailed godwit, with an average peak count of 2,548, about 13.9% of all of those wintering in Britain and a count only eclipsed by the Wash!

Other key species are ringed plover ( 416) , grey plover (3,025), knot (4,702) dunlin (15,167) and reds hank (3,012), all occurring in 'internationally' important numbers, i.e. the estuary supports, at times, at least 1 % of the entire north-west European population of these species.

There are also a range of 'nationally' important species, i.e. those reaching at least 1% of the wintering population in Britain - in this respect the Stour as a whole is important for great crested grebe (243), cormorant (148), dark-bellied brent (2,078), shelduck (2,116), wigeon (3,132), pintail (549), lapwing (5,491) and curlew (1373).

Quite apart from its value as a roost site, Copperas Bay is also of major importance for feeding waterbirds, with large numbers of many of the notable species present. Like roosting birds, these too are monitored but the whole estuary is only regularly counted every fifth year, unlike high water counts that happen annually and over nine months of each year. However, we monitor the fortunes of feeding birds annually within the various reserve areas and additional surveys may take place as part of monitoring erosion etc.

It is therefore as a 'wintering' (late July - early April!) site, rather than as a breeding site, that the Stour Estuary and the RSPB reserve comes into their own, for all of the intertidal areas are obviously frequently subjected to inundation by the sea including the adjacent saltmarsh, and whilst a few pairs of redshank and meadow pipits and the occasional skylark will attempt to breed they are rarely successful. However, ringed plovers, oystercatchers and a few pairs of little tern's breed around the edges and shelduck range out into the nearby woodland, or nest under fallen trees on the shore.

Their problems

The importance of the Stour Estuary is well recognised by it status as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) under UK legislation and as a Special Protection Area (SPA) under European law - furthermore it has been ratified as an internationally important wetland under the Ramsar Convention, which qualifies it as a site of world importance for waterbirds.

You would think that all these accolades would offer all the protection that this wonderful estuary deserves sadly, this is far from the truth.

Erosion is a major problem within the system - survey has revealed that over these last 25 years something like 59% of all of the saltings within the estuary have been lost and that the actual height of the intertidal mud is dropping by about 2cm per annum - an alarming state of affairs. Why is this happening? Detailed studies by Harwich Haven Authority have shown that the dredged channel to the Port of Felixstowe 'arrests' silt that is destined for the upper reaches of the Stour and Orwell estuaries - these
sediments should naturally 'feed' the estuaries but instead are dredged from the deep water harbour and dumped at sea. This loss of some two million cubic metres of material per annum causes the system to suffer from silt starvation, which in turn causes erosion. To survive, saltmarsh ( and mudflats) needs to be recharged twice-daily with silt, if this doesn't happen this important habitat will degrade, removing a natural defence between the sea and the land as well as a vital source of nutrients that feed adjacent intertidal flats.

To compensate for the direct loss of mudflats due to changes in tidal height (low water is higher these days!), brought about by dredging, a new managed retreat site has been created at Trimley, on the Orwell Estuary; Here a breach has been made in the sea wall to allow the farmland behind it to flood on the tides, in the fullness of time hopefully turning this poor grade agricultural land into saltmarsh and mudflats.

Ensuring that these super estuaries remain so for birds it a complex task involving a wide range of interested parties - we can only hope that co-operation between these often diverse interests will bring the results that the birds so richly deserve.

Russell Leavett (Senior Warden - RSPB Stour Estuary Nature Reserve)
 

Southend and District Wildlife Explorers Group Meet at Branksome Road Methodist Church, Branksome Road, Southend on the 3rd Tuesday of each month September - May from 07:30 - 08:30pm Come along for fun, games and broaden your birding knowledge For further information please contact: George Edwards, 5 Guildford Road, Southend on Sea, Essex. SS2 5AR Tel: (01702) 617817

A Winter with the Birds Down Under

Upon my retirement it was always in my intention that my wife and I would migrate for the winter (just like the birds) and spend time with our daughter who lives in south-east Queensland, just north of Brisbane, Australia. For the first winter of retirement this was not possible due to family illness, but on November 10th 1998 we boarded a plane and took off to spend five months down under.

We had been to Australia three times previously, for holidays of 4-6 weeks and with my interest in birds, started to tick off birds as I could recognise them, using a Slater Field Guide of Australian Birds.

With five months before me this time, the aim was to try and find a local birdwatcher who would be willing to take me out to some of his local patches, and show me new birds that I had not seen before. Little did I know how lucky I was going to be.

Shortly after our arrival my wife was reading the local newspaper when she noticed an advert for a meeting of the local Wildlife Preservation Society with a telephone number to ring if you were interested in attending. I rang the number and explained who I was, and the gentleman at the other end said I would be most welcome to go to the meeting. He also told me that there was a local bird outing to a rain forest area at a place called Mount Glorious, a few days before the meeting, and he would be pleased to meet us as he was leading the walk. For my wife and I this telephone call opened up a whole new circle of friends. The preservation society members are not all birdwatchers, but a mixture who have interests in Flora and Fauna, Insects, Frogs, Mammals, Habitat Protection and caring for injured animals and birds. My particular gentleman whose name was also John, was a bird watcher who had at one time been president of the Queensland Ornithological Society. He has recently written a Bird Watchers Guide to three of the local shires (our equivalent of the local parishes but much larger) based on his records of the past sixteen years and sightings published by the Queensland Ornithological Society. His recognition of a bird by its song or alarm call was something he had acquired after a lifetime birdwatching in Australia. He had a unique way of making a squeaking noise with his lips on the back of his hand, and within seconds we would have several types of Honeyeater, Golden and Rufus Whistlers, Flycatchers, Scrub wrens, Fantails and Robins all round us, curious to know where the noise was coming from. He writes all the bird articles for the local group and is the editor of their monthly newsletter.

This local group had only 25 members (not all birdwatchers) so you were lucky if 12 people turned up for the local outings. Normally 20 people attended the monthly meetings, despite them being well advertised in the local paper. The situation in Australia appears to be much the same as in Britain, where natural habitat is being sacrificed for road, house and commercial construction and unless people are directly affected, have no interest in saving wildlife for future generations.

Having made contact with John and then met him, it did not take much talking between us to strike up an instant rapport, what with his passion for birds and my eagerness to see and learn about Australian birds. John normally went out on his own two or three times a week, he would have gone every day if his wife had let him, leaving home at dawn - about 5am and returning between 9 and loam, before it got too hot. Incidentally his wife could identify many birds both visually and by their calls. Anyway, he said he would be delighted to have my company on these walks as another pair of eyes and ears would be most useful, and so our friendship developed. It is difficult to describe in words the many magic mornings we spent together walking in Mountain Rainforest, Swamps, National Forest, along mangrove lined creeks or on beaches, dressed only in a pair of shorts, tee-shirt and a hat sprayed with a mosquito/sandfly repellent (Ross River fever is on the increase in south-east Queensland) . Some mornings it was difficult to hear any bird calls as the Cicadas (a winged insect) would be singing away like a heavenly choir. Once one starts singing and they all join in. Apparently a single Cicada can pump out 120 decibels at close range. When they all sing this level of volume lies in the grey area between pain and pleasure on the ears.

Two weeks before we returned to Rayleigh, I was able to repay John's hospitality in a way that was quite remarkable. He had taken me to a place called Scarborough, yes many places have English names given by early settlers from Britain, where there is along curved shingle spit with a muddy beach exposed at high tide. We had gone there to see Double Banded Plover which migrate to this area in winter from New Zealand. We found the birds and were watching them, when I spotted a small wader close by that I recognised as a Little Stint. We checked the Slater Field Guide we had with us (and subsequently other reference books at John's house) and confirmed it was a juvenile Little Stint. This is the first record of this bird being seen in Queensland with only five other records in the other states in Australia. The find went out on the Australian bird internet that night and details have been sent to the Bird Observers Club of Australia. This was Johns 621st bird species for his Australian list and his last words to me when I said goodbye was "John, that first telephone call you made to me was one of the best things that has happened to me for a long time".

John Attfield

A DAY'S BIRDWATCHING IN BULGARIA

It was a glorious morning in late May, not a cloud in the sky. We were on the final leg of a wildlife tour of Southern Bulgaria organised by the British-Bulgarian Friendship Society. Snowy Mt Vihrin, where we had spent the previous day watching Wallcreepers, Rock Partridge and admiring the drifts of purple crocus, glistened in the sun and towered above our hotel which was tucked into the forest on a lower slope in the Pirin Mountains near the town of Bansko.

During a casual stroll before breakfast we had seen Black, Green, Grey-headed and Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, Serins, Bullfinch, Crossbills and Red-backed Shrike. Both Willow and Marsh Tits were added as new birds to our tour list which now totalled over 200 species. Not a bad start to the day!

It was pleasantly cool as we boarded our small coach and headed west and them south down into the Struma Valley. Shortly, we entered the impressive Kresna Gorge and pulled into a redundant section of the (now straightened) road alongside the river. In contrast to our base this area had a real Mediterranean feel and the temperature was beginning to rise. Large Cardinal butterflies were feeding on the flowering thistles and the strange Nemoptera with ribbon-like hind wings bobbed lazily around the herbage. From the top of the cliff a Blue Rockthrush was singing and further down a Rock Nuthatch scrambled along the rock face. Sardinian and Olivaceous Warblers added their vocal contribution from the scrub while slight swishing sounds overhead drew our attention to small flocks of Rose-coloured Starlings heading for their more northerly breeding grounds. Moving on towards the southern end of the gorge we stopped again to explore an area of scrub and small trees. We alighted from the coach and were surrounded by clouds of Nettle-tree butterflies who seemed attracted to the warmth from the stone wall alongside. As we struggled up the steep track in the midday sun a tortoise just ahead of us, clearly more attuned to the high temperature, found the going much easier maintaining a surprisingly nippy pace before disappearing under a low bush. We added Orphean, Subalpine and Icterine Warblers plus Sombre Tit to our list before descending to our coach.

By now lunch and a rest were high on the agenda so we headed further south for a few kilometres to where the valley opened up and the river was flanked by a groves of ancient poplars and willows. One of the giants had fallen parallel to the river bank providing some convenient seating in the shade. As we enjoyed our lunch a small tree on the opposite bank provided a perch in turn for Bee-eaters, Lesser Grey and Woodchat Shrikes and finally a pair of Rollers. A Penduline Tit also kept us entertained giving a lessen in recycling by dismantling an old nest and creating another a few metres downstream. A perfect birdwatching picnic spot.

Our leader Petar eventually stirred us and, leaving our driver to try his hand at fishing, we began to explore the surrounding area never straying far from the shade of the trees. We found a pair of Syrian Woodpeckers busy feeding their family in a hole only a couple of metres from the ground but the highlight was the discovery of a pair of Levant Sparrowhawks. These were a 'tick' for most of us and we enjoyed excellent views through our binoculars and were able to confirm all the diagnostic features illustrated in the field guide. From the same vantage point we also observed a small colony of Bee-eaters nesting in the river bank. Then, after a very welcome paddle in the river, we headed back to the coach.

The heat was by now taking it's toll so we stopped for refreshments at a small village. Whilst enjoying a cool beer there was the added bonus of being able to watch the activity at several White Storks' nests on the roofs of the houses. Feeling more invigorated after the break we made a couple of further short excursions adding Long-legged Buzzard to our daily tally. On the return journey to our hotel in the hills we reflected on yet another enjoyable day in beautiful Bulgaria.

Keith Crees

WORLD Birdwatch Day (brent geese)

7th October 2001
at Billet Wharf, Old Leigh

between 1030-1530

The Southend RSPB Group will be participating in this event by holding a birdwatch on the seafront at Old Leigh.

Please come along and give your support


 

For Diary - 2000/2001 and Notes on Meetings and Field Trips - Click Here

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