The board of the Church Stretton Branch of the Shropshire Ornithological Society regret that, due to lack of volunteers, the branch is closing down. Our last meeting will be on Monday March 24th, 2025, at 7 pm at the Methodist Church Hall, when Alan Heath will present a slide show and talk entitled “Magic Moments”.
Unfortunately, all further meetings have been cancelled.
We have been monitoring local Curlews since 2017. In 2024 we found eight breeding pairs. At least four pairs have been lost since we started, only eight years ago.
There is a real danger that we will lose these iconic birds for ever, unless we can find out why they are disappearing, and take action to halt and reverse the decline.
Since 2021, the Shropshire Ornithological Society (SOS) has worked with the Strettons area Community Wildlife Group to find nests, put an electric fence around them to protect the eggs from predators, and then fix radio-tags to the chicks and track them to see how they
use the landscape, and what happens to them. Not enough young birds fledge to replace the older birds dying off. We need to know why.
In 2024, we found six nests (one a replacement for a predated first nest). Two were predated before they could be fenced, and four were found and fenced (including the re-lay); a total of 10 eggs hatched. Nine of the chicks were tagged, but three lived only for a couple of days, and the other six lived for no more than nine days. Since 2021, we have found 18 nests, and fenced 15; 28 chicks have hatched and been radio-tagged, but none have fledged. Most of the chicks were predated, within a few days of hatching. No fledged young have been found here in any of the last four years, by the nest-finding project or the bird survey.
The project is expensive. In previous years we have received grants from the National Trust’s Stepping Stones Project, the Shropshire Hills National Landscape (formerly AONB) Conservation Fund and Stretton Focus community Awards, but no grants have been promised yet for 2025. We therefore need to raise funds through this appeal to carry it out.
Please donate by downloading a donation form here. If you pay income tax, please complete the Gift Aid certificate too. This increases the value of your donation by 25%, because SOS can claim the Gift Aid from HMRC. If the appeal raises more than we need to complete the planned work in 2025, the money will be carried forward to 2026.
Curlew Facts and Figures
Curlew is the “most pressing bird conservation priority in the UK”, because we have an estimated 28% of the European, and 19-27% of the world, population. It was added to the national Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern in 2015, because of a decline of 62% in the UK between 1969 and 2014.
In Shropshire, it declined from about 700 breeding pairs in 1990 to 160 in 2010 (a loss of 77%), and it disappeared from 62% of the Atlas survey squares (tetrads) between 1985-90 and 2008-13. The decline has continued, but the County still holds over 20% of the total in southern England. At the current rate of decline, the County population will half in about 12 years, and become virtually extinct in 24. Curlew is on the SOS Red List of Breeding Birds of Conservation Concern in Shropshire.
You can find more information about local Curlews, including details of how to make donations and where to send them, on our website
www.shropscwgs.org.uk/strettons-area-wildlife-group/
or contact Leo Smith (leo@leosmith.org.uk)
The Toad Patrol at All Stretton has so far rescued over 700 toads, 73 frogs and 40 newts. Volunteers from the Strettons have been manning the B4577 between Montgomery Waters Ltd and All Stretton. The support has been fantastic; car drivers have been very patient, and indeed most have been encouraging. Patrols will continue until the migration has stopped.
If you see a toad or frog crossing a road and it is safe for you to help, please remove them and put them on the verge that is in the direction they are facing. Use gloves (or grass) as human skin burns theirs.
There are other sites that we have not been able to patrol but maybe able to help at these sites in the future.
SACWG are hoping to launch a new project for 2025 – Strettons Toad Patrol.
Church Stretton Town Council has agreed to the installation of Toad Crossing signs at three vital migratory locations in All Stretton:
Adult toads and frogs emerge from their overwintering sites in spring and start migrating towards the pond on mild, damp evenings. Toads especially tend to return to ancestral
breeding ponds, whereas frogs will colonise a new pond very quickly. Toads and frogs will migrate along the same routes each year and are at risk of being killed on roads.
Migration runs from January through to April, and movement is most likely to occur on mild, damp evenings. This project aims to advise drivers to be mindful of toads and frogs crossing the road.
Supplementary to the signs, and if warranted, volunteers are being asked to step forward to help man a toad crossing. This entails being out on an evening when toads and frogs are likely to be migrating (high visibility jackets required), carrying a bucket, and moving them to safety.
For further details please contact Julie Cowley (juliecowley463@gmail.com; mob 07580159183).
The Church Stretton branch of the Shropshire Ornithological Society (SOS) is facing closure.
All of our board members are planning to resign at our AGM on Monday, January 27th, 2025 for personal reasons. We intend to run our pre-booked talks on February 24th and March 24th, but if we can’t find new board members to replace us we will not return in September.
The board is made up of a Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and one or more extra volunteers. However, that sounds more official than it really is. We are not “trustees” as the local branch is not a registered charitable organization. We merely manage the local branch for the main society. It is possible that fewer volunteers could run the branch if the jobs were divided up differently. At present, responsibility is apportioned in this way:
Chair:
Secretary:
Treasurer:
Other Volunteers:
We hope that some of the people who have attended our meetings and enjoyed our talks will step forward to take on and share these tasks. Please attend the short AGM at the end of January when we are looking forward to an entertaining talk about the amazing work of “Caring for God’s Acre”. If you can’t attend, but want to help, please contact me by phone or email.
Joan Arnfield – Board Member
01694 724170 or joanarnfield@gmail.com