News that local Chough sites had been successful with four sites producing young and upwards of 21 birds being around at different times and in different combinations. Other sites have apparently not been as successful with young birds perishing in the nest at an early stage.
Less welcome is that two of the traditional Golden Eagle sites have failed even though there was activity at each of them early in the season and incubation commenced. With greater access to the countryside occurring nowadays I wonder the extent to which even inadvertent and non-deliberate disturbance is having an effect on some species. For all such well known, traditional sites I feel a moratorium should be created within which no licences to visit should be issued by Scottish Natural Heritage be it for nest recording, photography or ringing purposes. It would do no harm for a period. Initial feedback from an informal "experiment" elsewhere, related to a quite different species, suggests some success might be attributed to such actions.
Quite out of the blue yesterday I picked up a reference advising that trichomoniasis, caused by a parasite, is reported to have caused the death of a fifth of the UK's Greenfinches. One of the "vectors" by which such diseases are transmitted, and over which we have some influence, are bird feeders which can be the source of the various agents responsible unless kept scrupulously clean. See the full report at http://tinyurl.com/36kftep
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