Spotted Flycatchers – do you have this increasingly rare bird breeding in your garden? Participate in our survey!
Milton villagers are asking to help with a county-wide survey of Spotted Flycatchers. These are attractive little migrant birds which are summer visitors to village gardens and churchyards. Although they breed with us, they spend ten months of the year travelling between here and their wintering grounds in Southern Africa. This is an increasingly dangerous journey for them, and sadly they are in deep decline. Widespread losses amounted to a 50% decline during 1995-2010, continuing an 90% decline since 1970.
Only some fifty pairs remain breeding in Cambridgeshire, so it’s now quite a rare bird, but most rural villages still have a pair or two. The Cambridgeshire Bird Club is again running a survey this year to find and monitor nesting pairs, and it’s almost certain that there will be additional pairs in our villages of which we are not aware.
Do you have flycatchers in your garden? Please let the Bird Club know.
Please email spofl@cambridgebirdclub.org.uk with any information you have, including records of single birds anytime between now and September.
See also
http://www.cambridgebirdclub.org.uk/spofl2017.html for details of the project and how to send in your records.