Comments on: Chough report: August 2017

By: Glyn Young

Glyn Young — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 22:55:38 +0000

Hiya. It’s still hard to judge unfortunately. It would be good to know how adequately the birds are finding food in the environment. Invertebrate numbers are low but if the choughs are finding sufficient food then, as most aren’t moving far along the coast, there might be area for lots of them. If, despite all of the birds foraging obviously, they aren’t getting sufficient food and relying on our supplements then maybe the population would be smaller. The birds now using Les Landes are showing that the flock is starting to spread out. I’d hope for a minimum of 50 birds in a self-supporting population but maybe 100 using widespread areas of the north, west and south-west coasts? And how about them colonising the other Channel Islands? Wouldn’t that be something!

By: Austin Hackney

Austin Hackney — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 07:42:35 +0000

Ah yes, thanks for the clarification. I wonder do you have a figure for the size of population you’re aiming for over a given timescale and is there an assessment of how many chough the island could potentially support in the long term?

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 18:43:37 +0000

Great report. Thanks Liz

By: Glyn Young

Glyn Young — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:32:51 +0000

In the early stages of a recovery programme like this, even with truly wild birds, every individual counts. As the population grows it is the overall population or establishing sub-populations that count. We’re still in the early stages. You can always tell when the management changes in a project like ours – they won’t all get names!

By: Austin Hackney

Austin Hackney — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:15:53 +0000

Super stuff, Liz! Fascinating report and glad you’re getting to the bottom of the wheezing. Sounds as if, with patience, it’ll be a relatively solvable problem. In bringing up a wild population, it’s a challenge to know when to intervene and when not to. At this stage, mostly intervene!

By: Judith

Judith — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 12:15:18 +0000

Another great update…like that enrichment feeder design 🙂