A new hide at Tamar Lake

Following discussions between DBWPS and South West Lakes Trust, the trust has generously agreed to provide a bird hide overlooking the designated wildlife refuge area at the north end of Upper Tamar Lake.

The area attracts some wildfowl in winter, a range of breeding passerine migrants in spring and summer, but it is for passage migrants in autumn that Tamar Lake is especially well known. The reservoir level normally drops through holiday usage and evaporation during July and August leaving a substantial area of mud particularly attractive to waders. Already this year the water level has dropped back a little, and bodes well for the autumn.

August 2008

What a fantastic response from Devon birders

Last November saw the start of the biggest survey ever to take place in the UK. A new “Winter” atlas and a new “Breeding” atlas will result after 4 years fieldwork during 2007-2011.

Andy Stoddart on behalf of BBRC

Introduction

Establishing the status in Britain of 'Siberian Chiffchaff' Phylloscopus (collybita) tristis has long been problematic. Key to this problem is the correct identification of the form - the difficulties of separating true Siberian tristis (largely from east of the Yenisey) and 'fulvescens' (on the West Siberian Plain) from abietinus (from Scandinavia and western Russia west of the Urals) continue to plague both observers and records committees. In particular, it has become obvious that different observers (and indeed different records committees) hold different perceptions of what constitutes true tristis and therefore apply different threshold criteria for acceptance into the local record. The recording of this form across Britain can therefore best be described as uneven and has never been attempted nationally. As a consequence, our knowledge of the true British status of tristis is incomplete and we do not yet know definitively whether tristis can best be described as 'scarce but regular' or 'rare but regular'.