English

While the cuckoo Cuculus canorus is in serious decline south of the Border, new research shows that in Scotland the birds are becoming increasingly common. The future looks so bleak for the birds in England that some experts believe Scotland could eventually become their last refuge within the UK. An analysis of three years of bird sightings within 10km sq plots across the UK - for the British Trust for Ornithology's Bird Atlas 2007-11 - reveals cuckoos are thriving in Scotland, and in mass decline in England and Wales. And the latest BTO Breeding Bird Survey shows cuckoos struggling to survive in large swathes of the UK. It revealed a 60 per cent decline in cuckoos between 1995 and 2008 in England, a 37 per cent decline in Wales, but a 6 per cent increase in Scotland. Dawn Balmer, Bird Atlas co-ordinator with the BTO thinks cuckoos are growing in number in Scotland even faster than thought.
Experts have theories about the change. "One thought is that adult cuckoos like fairly big caterpillars and maybe the food supply is better in Scotland," said Balmer.

The curlew Numenius arquata has almost vanished from Ireland in a mere 20 years, in one of the most dramatic declines ever recorded for a bird in the British Isles. From a breeding population estimated at 5,000 pairs in 1991, the Irish curlew's numbers have dropped to fewer than 200 pairs today, which if the estimates are correct would represent a staggering decline of more than 96 per cent. It is feared than in another decade the bird could be extinct. "Everything points to a decline which is truly catastrophic," said Anita Donaghy of Birdwatch Ireland, who led a survey of curlew numbers this spring. "We could hardly believe the results we were getting."

The Italian couple Marisa Valente and Renato Bologna have declared a 'Hunger Strike' to the death since July 4th in the City of Turin. They created an Apitherapy bee-business in the late 1980s on the borders of a National Park in the Asti region of Italy. It was, they say, 'a paradise for bees' and for a decade they made a good living selling honey, pollen and Royal Jelly. Then, in the late 1990s, the grape-growers of this wine region began using Neonicotinoids. Their bees began to die as they lost 20% of their hives in the winter, then 40% - and finally 80% in 2010. They stand to lose their business, their income, their home and their land - so they decided to go on Hunger Strike outside the Italian Ministry of Agriculture in Turin.

This study examined the effects of agricultural intensity, various farming practices, landscape composition and vegetation cover on the abundance and species richness of wintering farmland birds, assessed simultaneously across seven European regions. The abundance and species richness of wintering farmland birds were negatively affected by agricultural intensity. Of the 10 farming practices assessed, mechanical weeding and the amount of organic fertilizer applied negatively affected farmland birds, presumably due to reduced food availability on arable fields. More farmland birds were observed in areas with more stubble, pasture and green manure crops. Species richness was higher in areas with more pasture.

Of the 19 species listed on the Red List of the Birds of Conservation Concern in Ireland (BoCCI) due to breeding population concerns, nine (Grey Partridge Perdix perdix, Quail Coturnix coturnix, Corncrake Crex crex, Lapwing Vanellus vanellus, Curlew Numenius arquata, Redshank Tringa totanus, Barn Owl Tyto alba, Twite Carduelis flavirostris and Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella) are dependent upon farmland habitats at some point during the course of the year. In addition to this, several other bird species that are dependent upon agricultural habitats appear on the BoCCI Amber List. The only two species (Corncrake and Curlew) on the IUCN Red List (species of global conservation concern) breeding in Ireland are both species associated with lowland farmland (IUCN, 2010). Also, the most recent regular breeding species to become extinct in Ireland, Corn Bunting Emberiza calandra, was a specialist lowland farmland bird, with breeding last recorded in 1992.

Onion thrips, previously considered of minor importance to hybrid onion seed production in California, vector the newly introduced iris yellow spot virus, a serious pathogen of onions that can cause significant yield losses. Insecticide use to control onion thrips has increased in onion seed fields, coincident with a steep decrease in yields, especially in Colusa County. We found a strong positive correlation between honey bee activity and onion seed set, indicating that a lack of pollination may be contributing to the reduced yields. In addition, honey bee visits to onion flowers were negatively correlated with the number of insecticides applied per field and field size. Reduced onion seed yields in recent years could be associated with the increase in insecticide use, which may be repelling or killing honey bees, important pollinators of this crop.

Anderson et al. studied three species of birds known to pollinate the shrub Rhabdothamnus solandri. They compared shrub populations at sites on the North Island of New Zealand, where the birds are functionally extinct, to populations at sites on three nearby islands, where the birds remain abundant. Combining field studies with experiments, the authors showed that functional extinction of the birds limited pollination of the shrub, reducing seed production by 84% and reducing the number of juvenile plants produced per adult by 55%.

The breeding population of meadow-breeding waders in the Dellstedt bog area in the west of Schleswig-Holstein was investigated from 1969 to 2005. The breeding populations of four species (Eurasian Lapwing Vanellus vanellus, Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago, Black-tailed Godwit Limosa limosa and Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata) declined drastically; two species (Eurasian Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus and Redshank Tringa totanus) have almost disappeared from the area.