Stonechats have become a much more common sight but spotting reed buntings has become a rare occurrence for our wildlife expert Keith Kirk, who suggests keeping a log of your own wildlife sightings to you too can follow the fortunes of different species.
I have always advocated keeping a wildlife notebook, or encouraging you to at least make a few notes about the wildlife sightings you see each year. That way, rather than hearsay, you can look back and check population trends, dates for first arrivals, etc. for your patch.
I tend to be a creature of habit and visit the same locations each year. Looking back though my notes, it is interesting to see just how much of a change there has been in the species I have seen and recorded.
The ones that immediately comes to mind are stonechats. In the past, they were not that commonly seen, whereas now I see them all year round, and in many different locations where I had not recorded them previously.
Being a resident bird, their appearance can change slightly between summer and winter. Their beautiful, bright summer plumage is rich in colours, compared to that of a drabber colour in winter.
In comparison, the reed bunting used to be a very common bird during my formative years, and while I do still see them, I don’t see them nearly as often as I used to.
Neither are birds I have studied in any detail, so the only suggestion I can offer is that the milder winters have suited the stonechat, and the drastic changes in the region’s landscape, particularly around me, with the loss of many of our wetland areas, has surely affected the reed bunting.
They only seem to be very vocal really early in the morning, so maybe I have just missed them during the day, though it’s unlikely.
The male reed bunting is unmistakable during the breeding season, with his black head and broad white collar, although a male in his winter plumage is much drabber looking and could easily be mistaken for a female if you only get a quick glance at the bird. They are about the same size as a house sparrow, but have longer tails, streaked underparts, white outer tail feathers and a buff-coloured line above the eye. Their backs are also boldly lined. Female reed buntings have a brown head and buff throat all year round.
Anytime I get a phone call about an unusual looking sparrow below a garden feeder in winter, it will nearly always be a reed bunting, but sadly that’s not something we see in our garden during the winter months anymore.
Despite their name, reed buntings will breed in a wide variety of habitats, including dry environments such as grassy sand dune systems and farm hedgerows. The use of drier habitats is a relatively recent phenomenon, possibly due to the loss of the damper habitats they prefer.
In the past when there were lots of winter stubble fields, we used to see large flocks of mixed finches and reed buntings. Sadly, this is no longer a common habitat in Dumfries & Galloway during the winter months; any stubble fields I see in autumn are quickly ploughed and re-seeded.
