I checked up on the Bee-eaters a couple of days ago. According to the website the watchers noticed a change in behaviour a couple of weeks ago, with adults no longer taking food into the nests. A couple of days later they gathered together and flew off, never to return.
It’s a shame, both for the birds and for the volunteers who put so much work in.
Who knows what might happen – at one time Magpies and Buzzards were unknown around in the eastern counties and Red Kites were virtually extinct in the UK. Now they are all common, or commonish, sights around the area. yet be able to tell my grand-children about how they are lucky to have Bee-eaters and Hoopoes in the garden.
Then again, if the sea levels do rise as predicted, it might be exotic ducks we are watching.
Bee-eaters at East Leake
Hope your bee-eaters return someday, Quercus. That is a nice photo of them.
They keep trying. Maybe I will be able to write a post under the title of “The Return of the Bee-eaters”, though that will be some way off in the future.
Nice pics
I was also disappointed to hear about this the other week but as John says, they’ll be back. We have had such changeable weather this year! All was fine for them in the warmth and sunshine of the early summer but the dull, cool and wet weather during the past month or more must have diminished the amount of insects available for the bee-eaters and their chicks.
If it just enthuses a few more people to care about nature it will have been useful. Would be nice to see more of them about, even if they are a bit garish. 🙂
We got a pair up near us but there has been no reappearance.
Shame – they brighten the place up a bit.
They’ll be back. This is the fourth or fifth breeding attempt in England in recent years and they will continue. They breed now in northern France near Boulogne and if we can manage some nicer weather, they will certainly succeed.
One of the benefits of these heatwaves. 🙂
Sorry about the departure of the bee-eaters. Hope it’s temporary. Good news about the other species. We’ve had similar good things happen in central Maine along the Kennebec River, which was once so dirty you wouldn’t want to stick your big toe in it. Thanks to the Clean Water Act of the 1970s, the rivers are indeed clean, and we have eagles, osprey, and other birds along a river that once seemed lifeless.
Impressive improvement! Bee-eaters are very much at the edge of their range in the UK.