RSPB Survey

[Ian "snotman" Foden]

More sense written above than I've seen about the BD than I've seen in years.

 

[Ian "snotman" Foden]

OOOOOHHHH NOOO! its started a new page and I meant the replies/comments on page 1, from Bob and others,....not what the RSPB nonsense!

 

[mark williams 4]

As an RSPB member and angler, where do I start? Let's start with Bob's nonsense about 'two species of cormorant.' Crap. There's one, Phalacrocorax carbo, and it has subspecies, not separate species.
Secondly, there have been cormorants nesting inland since the Middle Ages - it's not some recent phenomenon. In research done in the late '50s, a scientist recorded Scottish loch cormorants which had been recorded breeding there in 1663, and bones recovered from the Fens prove they bred there too when it was marsh. Yes, there are more living inland than ever, but they DO migrate - dispersal, it's called - and go where the fishing's best. I know from bassing on the south coast that sandeels, mackerel and many other shoal fish are now hard to come by because they've been so overfished. And where do they go? No, not fertiliser, they go into animal feed, and a lot of them into trout and salmon pellets - fish food. So stocked trout and other fish farming contributes to the decline of 'industrial' fish (and consequently to bass and fish which feed on them) and may contribute to the dispersal of comorants inland.
Bob's assertion that 'We are active in creating and maintaining habitat, they are in the main passive. We have breeding programmes. What to they have?' begs the reply: spend several million of habitat conservation and buy up whole tracts of vanishing countryside on which much native wildlife depends.
Apart from the valuable battles fought by the ACA, angling invests next to sod all in preserving what's good. We buy up ancient lakes full of rudd and tench and stuff them with carp or catfish. And while I think the honourable people who visit this website DO care about rivers, the reaction from the rest when the going got tough was to fill the gaps around Bill Makin's goldfish bowls and pretend it was real life.
Angling, as a sport, makes one valuable contribution to the countryside; it is a good way of monitoring fish stocks. There aren't too many fishwatchers who aren't also fishers. But ask any club trying to organise a bank-clearing day how much practical help they get from 90 % of membership. None.
There are examples of lakes where the RSPB and angling are quite happy together. But ever since AT's cormorant poisoning story which landed its editor in court, they've kept a wary eye on us. They are well-organised, well funded and well-researched, so before we go shooting our mouths off at birding we should, as a sport, try to be even half as powerful and well-respected as they are, overturning the almost terminal chaos that is the angling fraternity. We, collectively, couldn't organise a mud-slinging contest in a slurry pit which is why angling, as a sport, is dying on its arse, with no effective national scheme to bring youngsters into the sport and no self-funded research into matters of enormous importance to anglers.

 

[mark williams 4]

I'm not suggesting we all roll over every time the RSPB growls, but get real; we don't have any science on our side, and we don't have any single organisation of three million members paying ?30 each. Even when we have the science - as for example when the EA revealed that in a sampling exercise on the Nene, not a SINGLE roach netted was able to breed - we do, er, nothing. The rivers are full of thalates, creating vast swatches of inland waterways in which all the fish are sexless transgender mutants and what happens? Nothing.
The Lee Valley's once bountiful trout streams are sucked dry by water abstraction. What did we do? Nothing.
What wed o is cling on to the old gamekeeper mentality which sees every predator as a problem, and thus hang out our prejudices like some awful gibbet of ignorance.
Let's start by getting some facts, have a bit of sympathy for the fact that some of our commonest birds have declined by 90 % (and show we give a stuff about the paucity of puffins) and see if we can work with birdwatchers. Even if they won't offer us direct support, I live in the vain hope that some of their talent for organisation will rub off

 

[Wolfman Woody]

Can I have your soapbox now, please, Mark. )

You made a few good points and I would back you on those 100%, especially with regards to helpers on work parties and on the point about sinensis being a SUB-species of carbo. It's still a different kind of bird though in it's habits.

However, you sited Scottish Lochs and the Fens as two areas where cormorants have bred since the middle ages. Many Scottish lochs close enough to the coast contain salt or brackish water and therefore hardly surprising that cormorants have bred there. Not sure which lochs you mean though.

As for the fens, they were until about the middle of the 17th century mostly sea water. Ely was the 'Isle of Eels' set amidst a brakish lake and a marsh, but it never tells us whether these were freshwater or silver eels. The place I used to live near Bourne probably had a sea frontage at one time and much of the land around there is 50' below sea level so not surprised at all that cormorants 'might' have bred there.

However, the RSPB's own publication on bird identification in 1980 stated that there were no known colonies of cormorants between the Humber estuary and the Isle of Wight. So where did these Fens birds come from?

Strange how the RSPB is not respected amongst all bird watchers either. I have met many of them who are members of BTO and frown on some of the headline grabbing antics of the RSPB. That, I confess, may be a bit like an SAA member calling the NFA and vice versa, but were I to become a member of any bird watching society it would likely be the BTO. Their members, the ones I've met, seem so much more in tune with our feelings on cormorants.

 

[Wolfman Woody]

Out of interest, a couple of clippings from BTO's website -

"Cormorants, historically an almost exclusively coastal-breeding seabird in the UK, have established dozens of inland breeding colonies in eastern and central England since 1980 (Rehfisch et al. 1999)."

"The UK Seabird Monitoring Programme shows substantial increases in numbers breeding inland in England and in Northern Ireland between 1986-99 (Upton et al. 2000)."

Comments on RSPB website - "The new policy is aimed at actively reducing the cormorant population. For the first time, fisheries owners will not have to demonstrate that cormorants are damaging their stocks." - Oh yes they do! This information is FALSE.

and "In the 16th century James I kept cormorants on the Thames which were trained to catch fish." So it was him that trained them to come inland?

"But the RSPB is outraged that the Government has licensed the killing of 1,500 cormorants in England in a misguided attempt to protect the sport of angling." There was never any pleasing the RSPB.

 

[mark williams 4]

Did I rather go off on one a few posts ago? Er, sorry...

Woody et al. From 'The Seabirds of Britain and Ireland,' published 1976: "Lack (1945) stated that eels are a favourite food of cormorants when fishing in fresh water. Mills (1965) found that on some Scottish freshwater lochs cormorants were not serious predators on young salmon, but where numbers were high they could be detrimental to trout stocks, 42% of the fish taken being brown trout."
Further: "On Windermere the taking of perch by cormorants was considered beneficial to other fish stocks..."
"Two colonies on freshwater lochs are known in Scotland... one of which has existed since 1663.." and so on.
Incidentally, stocks in 1969-70 were thought to be 8,100 pairs in Britain and Ireland - anyopne found a reference to their status currently?

 

[mark williams 4]

Answering my own question, I have found the following http://www.rspb.org.uk/science/survey/2004/seabird2000.asp which gives the 2,000 status as 11,700 breeding pairs. The BTO also confirms the general pattern of population growth and dispersal inland since 1980, as other FM posters have noted.
The RSPB's take on this is that they want to know why before sanctioning a cull. Personally, I am persuaded that Bob and others are right, and that as the species isn't at risk, we should be looking at managing the problem colonies. The RSPB cannot disagree with this in principle, since it is the way it has managed ruddy duck and hedgehogs - the only difference they might point out is that in both of the above, it is the artificial introduction of these species that has caused the problem (i.e. they don't belong where they are).
I have to say, however, that the carp tubs with their ludicrously high stock bring on many of their problems themselves. It is on naturalised and natural stillwaters and rivers that we should focus our attention.

 

[Bob Roberts]

Sorry, been away fishing for a little while. Back on line again but far too many comments to answer in one go. But let's start with,

"Bob's assertion that 'We are active in creating and maintaining habitat, they are in the main passive. We have breeding programmes. What to they have?' begs the reply: spend several million of habitat conservation and buy up whole tracts of vanishing countryside on which much native wildlife depends."

So they buy land and do nothing. That's passive in my book. The actual percentage of land lost to wildlife in the UK each year is much smaller than you imagine and even then, can you prove it is detrimental to overall bird populations. Animals and birds adapt. Motorways must be good for raptors for instance because I've never known there to be so many around.

You could argue that building houses is great news for house sparrows, starlings, garden birds, martins, swifts and swallows to name but a few yet these birds are in decline.

Buying tracts of land hasn't done a great deal for plovers and skylarks, has it?

So where does habitat meddling get you? I struggle to see the great success these millions are achieving.

However, the fundamental issue here is cormorants and fish populations. Why doesn't the RSPB buy up a few thousand acres of water and spend millions of pounds stocking with fish so the cormorants could eat them? And then spend more millions replacing the lost stocks. That's real conservation, eh?

Perhaps they might start their own fish farms, grow on the fish to nice cormorant bite-size, say 8oz, and we could benefit from any surplusses in production.

But there's a flaw there, what do we feed them on - I know, fishmeal pellets. Hang on, that needs us to kill more fish.

But that leads to another lie. The amount of fishmeal currently used by anglers is still tiny compared to its wider use. Fishmeal existed long before we began using it as a bait. The seas have not been denuded just because we have begun using pellets. That is bullsh*t!

There are too many cormorants in the UK. There are too few fish to sustain them long term.

Do we,
1. Ignore the fact until there are no fish and the birds starve to death?
2. Cull the birds humanely and quickly so the whole of nature benefits?

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't think it's a difficult choice. Anglers have a duty to protect the aquatic environment. When we recognised an imbalance of predators in the fens following the introduction of zander we generally accepted culling.

I'll accept a 5-mile coastal cormorant zone willingly providing everything outside it gets dealt with - now.

Every day we sit and do nothing the worse it gets and the RSPB really don't care.

 

[Jim Gibbinson]

Cormorants are difficult birds to shoot (I'm told!). In any event, if you've got, say, a dozen cormorants acyively hunting on your fishery, you'll get one of them at best. When they come back, you might get another. And next time, maybe another. All the while you are creating an inhospitable environment for them, so chances are they'll stop visiting your fishery. Yes, they'll go somewhere else - whereupon that fishery owner will need to take appropriate steps...and so on.

As Bob Said, if we harass them, I think it likely we'll effectively discourage them from visiting waters where they are made unwelcome.

Oh yes... acquisition of a licence to shoot them, contrary to Press statements, remains very difficult. There is nothing to prevent any club "scaring them away" by means of a shotgun, however (providing it's safe and legal to do so). Tragically, the occasional cormorant might accidently be hit (cough!).

 

[mark williams 4]

Bob. The RSPB isn't passive at all. For a start, on many of its reserves it has restored traditonal farming practices to favour birds such as corncrake, and wetland birds like curlew, snipe, and others. What is does depends on what's needed - sometimes all the birds need is a bit less disturbance, so that's what happens. And you're wrong - the RSPB HAS arrested decline of skylarks where it is allowed to manage the farming.
I agree with your argument that the land mass lost is relatively small, but very often it's land that favours birds that is threatened - the RSPB isn't buying up redundant open-cast coal mines.
You make a good point about the declines in garden birds. House sparrows, though, can only nest in houses with holes in, and we don't build them that way. Martins need a source of mud (not just for nest-building but for midges to breed in), and we don't leave it lying around for them. The reasons for the decline are complex, and I'm glad the RSPB is spending money finding them out.
There are, as you hint, plenty of cormorants around. The RSPB's argument is that we don't know why, and until we do, it is dodgy to launch a pre-emptive strike... the situation may be a portent.
We could argue with that, but the point I am making is that we don't do so from a position of strength. First of all, we know b*gger all about ecology. Look at the damage caused to natural fisheries by the introduction of carp, and the loss of rare whitefish on Scottish lochs where ruffe and roach have been introduced. The illegal (and sometimes legal) importation of fish has led to the release of parasites into wild fish stocks. Anglers don't do themselves any favours when it comes to gaining respect.
Secondly, angling has little independent research carried out on its behalf, so it doesn't get the facts it wants to know. For example, the old River Boards were hardly likely to reveal research which demonstrated that sewage was poisoning rivers, because it was causing the pollution. Similarly, nobody made much of a fuss about thalates because the people who knew the facts work for the Government, and the Government didn't want to screw up business by taking them out of circulation.
My final point is that our natural watercourses are under all kinds of threats, but the most damaging of all is poor recruitment to fish stocks; in Eastern Europe, where cormorants thrive on large inland 'seas' there's no shortage of fish. We should be asking ourselves why the rivers don't swarm with fish, and that began happening long before the cormorants arrived.

 

[Wolfman Woody]

I'll give you an example of two lakes, Mark. Admittedly not rivers, but these lakes have changed little in their ecology since their glory days.

Spade Oak approx. 80 acres -
Once a thriving fishery where tactics for the matchmen (about 50 or so each match) would be to catch a nice bag of skimmers and roach. Once they'd had a few pound of those, just to make certain they weighed, they'd cast a lob out for the big bream in the lake. Sundays, even if there was no match, you had to walk all the way down one bank and halfway along the bottom bank to find a free swim unless you were prepared to get up at 4 am. Evenings were also popular through the week and many a summer evening I took my son down there and had 20 or 30 decent sized roach out up to 1lb, not enormous, but fun.

Then, around 1988 the Black Death arrived. Just a few at first and I have to say, a bit of a novelty. They came in the winter and decimated the place, 160 at any one time. Lines of 40 or more of them chasing the shoals around and when they'd hearded them up all the birds would dive to fill up. I have witnessed it. The last decent catch of skimmers I took was in 1993 because now, the club gets 6 or 8 on a match and any Sunday you have the choice of any swim you like.

Target fish now? Big carp or tiny bleak, the only fish that can swim faster than a cormorant. All the rest of the fish are like shiny bottle tops and next year they are bird food.

Bray Lake, approx 45 acres -
We didn't know too much about the history of this one when we took it on except that locals raved about it. True enough when you got there you fished a very short whip for roach and perch up to 1?lbs, the odd skimmer and hybrid. Then you'd fish further out and further still on the float finishing the day on the feeder for some better bream.

I took a young lad on there once when we had a match on. He didn't fish the match itself, but had he have done he would have been placed around 3rd with 19lb of fish. That was when we had started to notice it's decline because a new pit was opened right next to ours. It had lots of lovely islands and old dead trees and best of all, it was undisturbed. No-one was allowed in there - just what BD wanted.

We gave that lake up in 1998 when a match recorded just one fish that didn't even move the needle. True there are still some huge bream in there, but they feed at night and you never catch any small ones. There is still a syndicate fishing it for carp though.

Does this tell you something? It tells me that BD are killers of fisheries. It explains why carp are a popular species to catch these days becaue if they're introduced at a reasonable size they'll escape getting eaten at least. I have no sympathies whatsoever for the BD except that their coastal and estuarine feeding grounds have been ruined, but it doesn't entitle them to come on our fisheries.

If you can't find work, can't feed your family, does it entitle you to go and steal your food from elsewhere? NO! And if marshall law was introduced the penalty would be the same for a thief as it now is for the cormorant.

 

[Wolfman Woody]

Oh and one other point I wanted to make - who the hell introduced those noisy smelly, messy, bloody honkers, Canada Geese, to our country?

Sir Peter Scott I believe. A birdwatcher. And now we have Bar Headed Geese and Egyptian Pied (?) Geese on the Thames. Oh thank you birdwatchers.

When it comes to alien introductions they have a lot to answer for as well. Ruddy ducks and all.

 

[Bob Roberts]

Hang on, I didn't HINT that there are plenty of cormorants around. Oh No! I'm shouting from the rooftops that there are countless bl00dy thousands of them that I would cheerfully destroy given the merest glimmer of a chance.

Skylarks? I saw one last year near Alrewas on the Upper Trent. So remarkable that I stood and gawped as it was the first I'd seen in years. Arrested decline? They were an everyday sighting when I was a kid. So were flocks of lapwings. Is the RSPB claiming responsibility for aresting their decline on the verge of extinction. Left it a bit late, didn't they? Pathetic measure of success or superb political spin depending on your viewpoint.

Naff all to do with fish and cormornats though...

It's no good trumpeting the RSPB's success at supposedly saving a few wading birds when they actively stand against the culling of, what was it you called them, a "sub-species" (not a different species, but buggered if I can tell the difference as neither belong on my local rivers, canals or lakes).

This sub-species that has arrived from the Continent and created havoc. A sub species that has not decimated fisheries as some claim. To decimate means to reduce by one tenth. Cormorants have reduced silver fish in many lakes by more than 90 per cent.

Given their rate of multiplication there's more than half a chance they will systematically drive some fish species towards extinction and you're now going to tell me that the RSPB actually give a f***.

I've just had a great idea as to what the RSPB might do with their ?30m a year. If they care so much about cormorants then instead of buying-up land that appears to have no beneficial effect on the majority of our popular bird species (call me a cynic but I suspect a hidden motive in these acquisitions) why don't they buy up the sea instead? Should be quite cheap as it'll practically come as a vacant lot.

Then they can protect it and ban trawlers, spend all that research money on breeding programmes for sandeels and hey presto, all the sea birds will stop dying, the anglers will be happy and cormorant survival along the coastline will be secured.

Meantime we anglers can get on and deal with the inland birds with no great cause for alarm.

You see, if we ever decide to get serious about cormorant eradication then we won't sit around waiting for them to come to us. We need to get proactive not reactive and the most effective way is to shoot them on their nests, thus eradicating parent and brood in one go.

Lamping and shooting while they roost will work well outside of the breeding season.

You might be sensing that I'm ?avin a larf? Mark but I'm deadly serious. It's the RSPB who are really taking the pi55... I'm not sure you are an angler Mark, certainly not a serious one because you can only see the fluffy feathered side of things. You are actually debating for their right to be here at any cost to fish.

I just wish that cormorants ate chaffinches and blue tits. Or cross bred with chiff chaffs. Oh, how different it would all be then.

As for Canada geese, Woody, a Canadian once described them to me as rats with wings and as for them being over here he saw it as their revenge for us exporting our carp to them in the first place.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Jeff,

The new modified Open General Licence to shoot pest birds now includes for Canada Geese.

However, with typical DEFRA efficiency, they only announced the new regulations (exactly like thiose for Cormorants) 8 hours before the modified licences became available.

 

[Ian "snotman" Foden]

We have one of the biggest breeding colonies in Europe on Rostherne Mere in the NW. It is a protected bird sanctuary. For the last 10 years or so this colony has grown and Cormorants can be seen every day for miles around on meres, lakes, ponds, canals and rivers. Many of the remote lakes meres which had huge silver fish stocks are often now devoid of anything other than large fish and fry/small fish which only reach 4-6 ounce before being eaten again.

Lakes or meres which are less remote or river/canal sections in towns are less affected, as Cormorants are less willing to feed in such locations or in such numbers.

This universal decline in fish stocks is clear, undisputed and environmentally unprecedented, to my limited research/knowledge.

I agree that the Angling lobby is in disarray at present, and that the RSPB in particular are a far more organised and effective guardian for birds, many of which rely on fish for food.

Is it so unreasonable that Anglers wish to arrest the clear "imbalance" in nature that has arisen, from to a large degree, an alien invader or at least the quantity of such invaders?

What I can't understand is why the RSPB et al can't or won't accept this and have either procrastinated or opposed proposals to address this clear imbalance in nature.

Are there any RSPB or other bird members out there who actually accept anything above or have any respect for Angling's concerns? Maybe there are a silent majority who do? if so, I wish they were more vocal!

 

[swordsy]

Well said Ian, it is time tha angling bodies started looking ahead and seeing the bigger picture and we as anglers must support these moves.

The advantage the RSPB has over angling is that angling is so factional, some anglers enjoy matchfishing others specialise in carp, barbel, roach or chub fishing. Most have a preferance and find themselves very absorbed in their own little world whereas bird watchers watch birds therefore they move as one, they act as one, they think as one and they speak as one.

We have too many voices all shouting about the same things but nobody can understand a word we are saying because all that is coming out is garbled chatter.

 

[Matt Brown]

Is it true that Cormorants need to eat 3lb of fish each day?

 

[Matt Brown]

And do they eat anything other than fish?

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Matt asked:
"do they eat anything other than fish?"

Well, Matt a strict diet of 'BBB 12 Gauge Full Choke' seems to work wonders for 'em around our way!

Sorry tree-huggers - I couldn't resist that one