2023-07-30 08:58:07
In 2022, there were slightly more winners (51 percent) than losers (43 percent) among the nearly two hundred Dutch breeding birds. The numbers of 6 percent of the species were more or less stable. Sovon Vogelonderzoek listed the numbers of birds for the twentieth time in the report ‘Breeding birds in the Netherlands 2022’.
The reports are used by the provincial and national governments to coordinate nature policy. In the latest report, those governments can read that it makes sense to create new wet nature areas. For example, breeding birds from the forests and marshes do well in the Netherlands.
Our administrators can also see that the agricultural landscape is still the Achilles heel for Dutch breeding birds. A large proportion of the breeding birds that did poorly in 2022 depend on farmland. For example, the number of breeding pairs of our national bird, the black-tailed godwit, has declined by 65 percent since 1990.
Winners
A notable winner is the quail. This farmland bird had its best breeding season since 2012. With about 4800 breeding pairs, there were about six times as many quails last year as in 1980, the year in which the structural counts started. Yet researcher Joost van Bruggen of Sovon is not immediately delighted. “The quail is a rather pragmatic bird. Unlike a black-tailed godwit, which is faithful to its breeding place, a quail can easily move hundreds of kilometers if, for example, there is a lot of drought in France during the breeding season. Where we had a lot of quail in the Netherlands last year, I can already say that in 2023 that will be a lot less.”
For winners such as the moustache, a small songbird that breeds in wet reed beds, the story is clearer, says Van Bruggen. “You can put the increase and decrease of the mustache exactly over the maps with the precipitation in the Sahel. When it has rained a lot in the Niger Delta in the winter, we see a lot of mustaches returning to the Netherlands in the spring.” Other reed birds, such as the bluethroat, also did well last year. There are almost ten times as many bluethroats breeding in the Dutch reed beds as in 1980.
Losers
Among the losers, the tree sparrow has been a leader since 1990 with a minus of 90 percent. “The places where the tree sparrow still survives are old yards, with junk corners and pollard willows,” says researcher Erik Kleyheeg of Sovon. “That indicates where the problem lies: the agricultural Netherlands is too sterile and too tight. However, that is not the whole story”, Kleyheeg thinks. “In Asia you also see tree sparrows in huge numbers in the cities. So why don’t our tree sparrows move from the countryside to the city?”
Another notable loser is the common mallard. “It hasn’t grown enough chicks for years to keep the population up to standard,” says Kleyheeg. “It’s easy to blame predators like blue heron or pike for that, but I think the problem is earlier in the food chain. If there is less food for the chicks in the water, they have to come out of the cover in the ditch much more often to satisfy their hunger. And that coverage is also becoming less and less,” says Kleyheeg.
Another notable loser is the smallest bird in the Netherlands, the goldcrest. Since the 1980s, only half the number of goldcrests remains. The researchers are completely in the dark about why.
Striking appearances
Among the striking appearances is the dunlin in the report. Ecologists Jan van der Winden and Camilla Dreef found a nest with young for the first time last year in the new nature reserve Markerwadden, in the Markermeer. “Of course we know the dunlin as a migrant, in those huge groups that you can see along the Wadden coasts and in the Delta. Many of these birds breed in the Arctic, but there is also a subspecies that breeds around the Baltic Sea. The Netherlands is located on the southern border of the distribution area for these birds,” says Van der Winden.
On the Red List, the book with endangered birds, the dunlin is listed as ‘disappeared from the Netherlands’, but Van der Winden thinks that is an underestimate. “The migration to the north of those large groups of sandpipers continues until June, when the first groups will return from the north. Try to discover a breeding case among all those birds.”
According to Van der Winden, the fact that the bird has now turned up on Markerwadden is a plea to continue ‘gardening’ in Dutch nature. “You can only get pioneers who like new land back here by putting back the natural succession now and then, so by removing emerging trees or spraying sand. Or you have to wait until the sea level rises so fast that the dikes break. Then we will automatically get pioneer nature back.”
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