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Farming Today: 08/05/20 Booming bitterns return to Morecambe Bay

08/05/20 Booming bitterns return to Morecambe Bay

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 08/05/20 Booming bitterns return to Morecambe Bay

Caz Graham goes searching for the distinctive boom of the Morecambe Bay bittern.

Caz Graham dons her head torch and walks the reed beds in search of the distinctive boom of the Morecambe Bay bittern with the RSPB’s Jarrod Sneyd, Jon Carter and Richard Mille.

For the first time in 20 years there are two male bitterns booming at each other across the reed beds of the Leighton Moss RSPB Reserve on Morecambe Bay.  Birders and staff there are delighted because it shows that years of detailed work studying the nuances of bittern behaviour and preferences and managing the reed beds accordingly have paid off.

The bittern is a secretive bird, it’s very rare and brilliantly camouflaged; part of the heron family, it hides itself away in dense reed beds and it’s best known for its far less secretive ‘Boom’, its highly distinctive call, likened to a foghorn and heard up to three miles away during the breeding season. In the 1990s bitterns were within a whisker of becoming extinct with just 11 male birds left in the UK.
 
Caz Graham dons her head torch and walks the reed beds at dawn in search of the distinctive boom of the Morecambe Bay bittern with the RSPB’s Jarrod Sneyd, Jon Carter and Richard Miller who show how they manage their reed beds to make bittern-friendly habitats and explain what steps Leighton Moss is taking to further boost their bittern numbers.

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