What is happening to the UK’s African migrant birds? Why are they declining so fast? Can you help?

03/06/2009 15:03:08 The Out of Africa Appeal
June 2009. We are seeing worrying declines in many of our African migrants. The Wood Warbler and Pied Flycatchers have undergone declines of 60%. Nightingales, Spotted Flycatchers and Garden Warblers are also amongst the group to have exhibited downward population trends. Even the Willow Warbler is close to being red-listed.

Help the BTO find out more
Our knowledge of ecology of the migrants in their wintering grounds is extremely poor and severely hampers our ability to explain these declines and our ability to conserve this group of species. We lack even basic information about when birds arrive, the habitats they use and how they move around Africa.

With worrying changes in distribution appearing in Atlas maps, we really need to get started now, if we are to try to explain what is happening to African migrants.

Out of Africa Research
We are proposing that the BTO should start working on projects that fall into three main areas:

• Set up special studies in Africa to try to understand how birds use different areas and habitats during the course of our winter. We'll probably need the help of volunteers for this work.
• Work internationally - to look at the bigger picture of European / African migration and to develop close working relationships with conservationists and scientists across a range of African countries.
• Look for evidence within data from the Nest Record Scheme and the Ringing Scheme to see if problems are more closely linked to habitat and/or climate changes in the UK or within Africa.

A suite of BTO projects
Amongst the suite of proposed projects, is one in which we will be working together with RSPB & BirdLife partners in Africa. This is a hugely exciting research project in West Africa that will contribute enormously to our understanding of when the birds arrive, what habitats the species use and how they move about through the autumn, winter and spring. North-south transects from the Sahara to the coast will be identified and studied over the next three years.
And this is just the start. This initial investigation will help us focus on more detailed ecological work that needs to take place in the wintering areas, to assess the problems faced by our long-distance migrants.

Nightingales
One of the species-specific projects will use the latest data-gathering technology. Thanks to the efforts of our members and supporters we now have a good indication of how Nightingales use different habitats in the UK, and what we need to do to conserve their habitats. However, numbers keep falling and we have huge gaps in our knowledge. How do Nightingales migrate through Europe and where do they winter in Africa? A new project, using the latest, lightweight dataloggers, will turn individual birds into long-distant sentinels, gathering information on locations and routes in their time away from England. This will revolutionise our understanding of their migration and, as part of a wider project and Birdlife partners in Europe and Africa, help to target effective, informed conservation action.

Click here to find out more.