Bewick’s swan - ups and downs and moving around.
There were 80 Bewick’s swan grazing an arable field near Coldharbour Lane on Walland Marsh today. This suggests that numbers of this bird continue to fall in the area. In the 1960’s it was a rarity with fewer than 20 wintering birds reported, however numbers started to increase in the 1970’s so that by the early 1990’s there were between 300-350 wintering swans - numbers of international significance. These increases have been linked to changing agricultural practices, namely increased growing of oil-seed rape on which the birds now graze. Read the rest of this entry »