When the Birds Go North Again
As y'all wake upwards on a frosty wintertime morning time, it's difficult not to envy a eat, 9,600km away in southern Africa with the sun on its dorsum. Some of our swallows will spend this very twenty-four hour period flitting around herds of grazing animals, such as elephants, buffalo and wildebeest, snapping upward flying insects disturbed by the herbivores' feet. In one case dorsum in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, they will practise the aforementioned effectually herds of cows.
About 50 species in all go out our shores each year on a substantial s journey, to spend the British winter in gentler climates. But at the same time, many bird species – such as geese, swans and ducks – migrate to Great britain in fall, overwintering on our shores before leaving once again in spring.
So why do birds migrate? Where do birds migrate to? Which bird species arrive in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland in fall and which ones get out ahead of winter? Looking ahead, which bird species arrive in leap and which ones leave before summer?
The different types of bird migration
To understand migration properly, there are a number of terms worth knowing about:
Seasonal migration
This is a movement betwixt breeding and not-breeding ranges. Summer visitors arrive from the south and winter from the north.
Latitudinal migration
This is the migration from northern regions to southern, and vice versa.
Longitudinal migration
Particularly common in continental Europe, this is the movement of birds between eastern and western regions.
Irruptions
Irregular migrations are caused by a lack of nutrient and water, resulting in large numbers of birds flight to unfamiliar areas.
Nomadic migration
Like irruptions, these result from a lack of vital resources, simply birds cover shorter distances and stay within a familiar range.
Altitudinal migration
This is a motility from high to low footing during the colder months, usually over brusque distances. Skylarks practise this.
Moult migration
During moulting flavor – often a vulnerable fourth dimension for birds – species such as shelducks head to safer grounds.
Drift
On very rare occasions, migrating birds 'drift' abroad from their normal routes as a result of storms, for case bluethroats in Norfolk.
Reverse migration
This is most frequently seen in fall when young birds go dislocated, flying against their expected route.
Dispersal
This occurs when juvenile birds are forced to leave fledging grounds to detect new territory – it'due south not a true migration.
Guide to winter bird visitors
What are winter visitors?
Winter visitors are birds that arrive on Britain's shores in autumn, then leave once more in spring.
Why do birds migrate to Britain in autumn and winter?
Wintertime visitors come to the Uk from the north and east for the mild climate and abundance of nutrient, then return north and east to breed.
Dissimilar types of winter visitors
Redwing
Like in appearance to the song thrush and mistle thrush, the redwing is the smallest of the thrush species found in Britain. It tin be identified by the orangish-blood-red patches under its wings, and by the creamy stripe over its eyes. Only a couple of pairs nest here, with the majority make it in hither in autumn to feed on berries, before leaving again in March and April.
Fieldfare
The fieldfare is another thrush that visits Britain in winter, larger than redwings and vocal thrushes, but a little smaller than mistle thrushes. It tin can exist told apart by its grayness head and rump. They arrive here from October onwards, and existence to render in March.
Bewick's swan
The Bewick's swan is the smallest of the swan species found in Britain, sheltering hither in farmland, freshwater wetlands and coastal bays. They travel ii,500 miles from Siberia, facing a number of challenges forth the mode including predation, illegal hunting, and the risk of hitting ability lines. In February 2021, a flock that had started their migration dorsum to the Arctic were forced to return to Gloucestershire due to Storm Darcy.
Barnacle goose
This modest goose has a creamy face, short bill and blackness neck and winters in Scotland, Ireland and northern England after convenance in Greenland and Svalbard. At that place'southward a pocket-size resident convenance group of 1,000 pairs. Winter population is 90,000.
Canada goose
Introduced from North America, there are now 62,000 pairs in the United kingdom and the number is growing. Big and with a brown body and black neck, it has become the Britain'due south about familiar goose of park lakes. It is seen as a pest in some areas.
Pink-footed goose
This medium-sized goose resembles the white-fronted but has a dark face and bill and pink legs. Arriving from Greenland and Iceland, around 300,000 wintertime on the east declension, especially Norfolk, though some fifty,000 choose Lancashire'south coast.
Black-tailed godwit
One of our largest waders, with long legs and a long pecker for probing in mud for worms and snails. Orange-brown in summer, it has grey winter feather with black-and-white wing bars noticeable in flying; 44,000 from Iceland spend winter in the UK.
Sanderling
A tiny scuttling sparrow of the sandy shore that seems to dance in and out every bit the waves lap the embankment. It is a winter visitor so nosotros simply get to see its grey-white colouring and not the gorgeous tortoiseshell plumage of summer; it breeds in the Chill.
Great northern diver
Great northern divers are thought to be the oldest bird species in the world. Large and powerful, their red eyes may help them run across underwater on fishing dives upwardly to 60m deep. They breed in North America and winter on Atlantic shores, gathering in large numbers around the north-west coast of Scotland. A strong north-westerly air current, however, can button them south.
Maverick waxwing
Arriving in pocket-size flocks from key Europe, these exotic peach-tinged birds with black eyeliner and debonair crests are a sign that it's even colder on the continent than it is here. Waxwings love hedgerow berries.
Guide to summer bird visitors
What are summer visitors?
Summer visitors are birds that arrive on British shores in bound to breed. They spend summer in U.k., rearing their immature before returning southward in autumn.
Why do birds migrate to United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland in bound and summertime?
The most intriguing question about our summer visitors is non why they become southward, but why they return to Uk yr after twelvemonth. On the whole, there are two factors that compel them to come hither. Outset, there is enough of room to concord territory without existence crowded out by African birds.
And secondly, the long daylight hours let birds to feed their young for longer every 24-hour interval, helping them to grow speedily. And it is this, on a Feb morning, that beckons the swallow northward. February is the big moving month – soon it will be on the fly.
Where exercise summertime visitors drift to in autumn and winter?
Most of bird species that exit Britain in autumn go to Africa, simply not all. The Manx shearwater flies beyond the oceans to spend the winter off Argentina, while, famously, the Arctic tern swaps the farthermost northward for the farthermost south, reaching and sometimes circumnavigating Antarctica.
At the other cease of the scale, birds such as blackcaps may have the brusque-haul option and while the wintertime away in Spain, alongside man ex-pats.
Why do birds get out Britain in autumn and winter?
The advantages of going south are obvious, particularly for insectivorous birds. Swallows and nightingales would be taking a big chance to take a chance a British winter, when just a few very cold days could be enough to starve them to death. Further southward there is more food all year round, but there is also much more competition. Not simply are there African resident birds, but also migrants from Europe and Asia. A patch of scrubby African forest is quite a melting pot of nationalities between October and March.
Wherever they end up, at that place is no dubiousness that their immediate surroundings will look considerably different to the frigid, bare British countryside in winter.
In Espana or Northward Africa, migrants volition forage among olive leaves and evergreen scrub. Willow warblers in tropical Africa feed in the crowns of acacia copse on lush savannah, where simply giraffes can attain. Cuckoos volition disappear into dense forests, while garden warblers volition head into thick montane scrub with a biodiversity many times higher than ours.
Northern wheatears bandy moorland for semi-desert landscapes, and nightingales will sometimes throw off the reticence they show in the Uk and feed in gardens and patches of cultivated land in Africa.
Do birds change their behaviour when they migrate?
Much as 'our' birds find themselves in a inverse landscape, they do not get fundamentally different. A spotted flycatcher in tropical Africa does what a spotted flycatcher does in Britain: it makes darting sallies to grab insects in flight. It might catch termites and other exotic invertebrates, just its feeding methods are much the same.
Arctic terns dive for fish, turtle doves eat grain on the footing and reed warblers climb upward and down stems of marshland plants with their potent feet, but as they practice every 24-hour interval of their lives in the U.k..
If anything, information technology is our resident birds that change nutrition the well-nigh when our migrants leave these shores; blue tits and many others switch from feeding on caterpillars and other insects to a diet of seeds and nuts.
How long does it take birds to migrate?
It's easy to forget that our migrants don't just wake up one forenoon under African skies. Almost take a month or more to become to their wintering grounds, and they must accommodate to any places they laissez passer on their travels, as well every bit their destination. They need to overfly the English language Channel and the Mediterranean, and then the Sahara Desert. Settling into the African bush must be easy by comparison.
Different types of summer visitors
Osprey
The osprey's exercise of hunting fish past plunging into water from a tiptop is easily translatable from United kingdom to Due west Africa, where our birds winter. The practice as well works equally well in salt water as in fresh. Five thousand kilometres abroad, our birds mainly stay on the coast in winter, fishing in the shallow, sheltered h2o merely offshore, or forth big rivers. They compete with African fish eagles in some areas.
In United kingdom, ospreys make it in March and April to inhabit freshwater lakes, mainly in Scotland. They're also found at Rutland Water, in the midlands, and in Poole Harbour, Dorset.
Wheatear
The wheatear is mostly a bird of cropped grassland and moorland, commonest past far in northern Britain. In Oct it departs for Africa, with European birds spreading across from due west to east just southward of the Sahara. They settle in distinctly barren areas, often at altitude, with rocky outcrops, where they proceed a territory and defend it aggressively from other birds. They feed on invertebrates in the same fashion everywhere, perching on a stone or bush-top to survey the scene, and so running or flying afterwards their casualty.
Chiffchaff
Migrant chiffchaffs leaving these islands can winter anywhere between Spain and tropical West Africa, with the bulk settling around Senegal, just south of the Sahara. They live in a wide variety of scrubby areas, oft in arid regions – rather a different profile from the tall, lush deciduous woodland that is their typical British breeding habitat. Chiffchaffs use the aforementioned foraging methods, restlessly searching the leaves for modest invertebrates. They exit their wintering grounds in February and arrive dorsum here in March. The chiffchaff is widespread, breeding in woods throughout U.k..
Xanthous wagtail
This buttery-yellowish delight is a much-declining bird of meadows, wetlands and abundant farmland. One of the best ways to run across it is at the anxiety of horses and cattle, feeding on the flies disturbed by hooves. Translate that to Africa, and yous tin add in zebras and elephants. The yellowish wagtail winters across tropical Africa, only most of our birds are in the due west. They feed in much the same fashion everywhere, dashing after invertebrates on the ground, or darting into the air. In Britain, they're found mainly in central and eastern England, from April to September.
Redstart
In Britain, this delightful robin-similar bird is strongly attached to the sessile oak woods of the north and west with their tangles of lichen and moss, dripping with insect life all summer long. Maybe surprisingly, it swaps this lavish habitat with much drier, scrubby habitats in the Sahel of West Africa, even in Mali, much of which is desert. In Africa, it probably spends more time feeding on the ground, like a robin.
Common in much of Uk, yous can find redstarts in the New Forest, Central Wales and the Lake District, likewise as much of Scotland.
Eat
The swallow has one of the longest migrations of whatsoever bird, with the British population heading for the eastern part of South Africa, where they arrive in November as harbingers of spring. They feed there in much the same way, swooping low to catch juicy flying insects, although they too nab some seeds from Acacia cyclops, hovering at the tips of the branches. They also roost in huge numbers in reed beds.
Swift
Swifts arrive in Britain in tardily April or early on May, and are a welcome sight and sound in the skies. Still, they don't stick around hither long – staying simply long enough to breed before starting time their autumn migration back to Africa in tardily July or early August. It's believed that their autumn migration is prompted by fewer insects in the air.
Turtle dove
It'south quite unusual for a seed-eating bird to exist a long-distance migrant, simply the turtle dove breaks the dominion, leaving in September to fly to the Sahel region, a dry, scrubby belt south of the Sahara, in countries such equally Mali and Senegal. Here it is much more arid that in the farmland of U.k., although the turtle pigeon only feeds on seeds and grains, as it does hither. Now rare in Britain after a drastic pass up, the turtle pigeon occurs principally in South East England. Wait for it in summer at the Knepp Estate in W Sussex, Martin Downwardly in Hampshire, and much of Eastward Anglia, such as RSPB Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire.
Cuckoo
Tracking of cuckoos in recent years has revealed much about their extraordinary migration. Many adults get out Britain on their south journey equally early every bit June. They then fly to Westward Africa (Nigeria for example), followed past a journey into the deep rainforest of the Congo Bowl – a minimum of 6,500km –where they spend most of the wintertime. This is a completely different habitat to the marshes, moors and farmland they inhabit in Britain, and they are hardly always seen in the rainforest.
The cuckoo returns to Britain in Apr. Following a big population decline in the due south of England, they are now about common in northern England and Scotland.
Blackcap
This common warbler is a short-range migrant that winters in southern Spain and Morocco. But in recent years, breeders from Germany and Austria have been flying w to spend the winter with us in Britain, and these birds often visit garden feeders.
Atlantic puffin
What puffins did in wintertime was a mystery until recently. By tagging these tough little members of the auk family with geolocators, scientists have shown that they caput far out to sea, braving several months in the stormy N Atlantic.
Whitethroat
In the weeks before information technology migrates, this hedgerow warbler switches from insects to sugary berries to speedily put on weight every bit fuel. Information technology spends the winter in the barren, scrubby region known every bit the Sahel, to the s of the Sahara.
Chill tern
Nicknamed 'sea swallows', these graceful, long-winged seabirds are truthful globetrotters. They swap our northern wintertime for the permanent daylight of the Antarctic summer, looping around the Atlantic Ocean to become there in an ballsy journeying up to 35,000km long.
Little tern
The little tern is one of the United kingdom's smallest seabirds and weights simply forty-6og. They spend the winter in Africa, and return to the U.k. in April to nest on our sandy and pebble beaches. Their nests are vulnerable to predation, and to disturbance by humans and dogs. If disturbed, adults volition leave the nest, leaving their eggs or chicks exposed to the cold and predators. Little tern nesting colonies are also struggling with climate change, and rise seas and coastal flooding can wash away nests and chicks. Their return migration takes place in August and September.
Words: Ben Hoare, Dominic Couzens, and Megan Shersby.
Source: https://www.countryfile.com/wildlife/birds/where-do-birds-go-in-winter/
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