A SUMMER RECORD OF EURASIAN BITTERN IN EAST LANCASHIRE.

By Tony Disley.

On the 23 July 1984 I visited the River Ribble at Marles Wood nr Dinckley with my sister and parents on a family outing, I was 12 years old at the time. To say I was birdwatching would be a lie, I was actually in an inflatable dinghy in the middle of the calm waters of what is known locally as the ‘Salmon Pool’, on a beautiful summers day!

  As I was busy rowing away I noticed what I thought was a piece of wood / branch that looked remarkably like a Heron shaped bird at the waters edge by a small patch of vegetation. I began rowing in the direction of the ‘branch’ to check it out when to my total surprise it moved! I was about 30-40 metres away from the bird, on a dinghy, without my bins. 

I shouted to my Dad to checkout the bird by the vegetation with my binoculars as I quickly rowed back to the shore. As I got out and ran up to the spot my Dad was watching from, he said excitedly “I thinks it’s a Bittern”. 

As I looked there it was, a Bittern on the River Ribble! We watched it for a while before a man walked past taking photo’s of the river, I asked him if he’d try and take some pictures of the Bittern. He unfortunately only had a small lens but managed to get very close to the bird as it sky pointed and took a couple of photo’s, one of which accompanies this article. 

On returning home I informed A. A. Cooper of my sighting, but despite searching by AAC the next day the bird was not seen again.

Robin Horner and John Wilson of Leighton Moss commented on the record as follows:

" I have discussed this with John and we reckon that it is quite possible that this bird was a juvenile from Leighton Moss. It is quite an early date for dispersal but not outrageous with many records of young dispersing from Leighton in August. Also the population at Leighton was higher in the 1980s so early breeding would be more likely then.

Radio tracking studies at Leighton seem to indicate that young birds always disperse from the Moss in late summer usually in August. So far around 9 young birds have been radio tagged over the years and they have all left the reedbed in August, most never to be seen again.

Young dispersal seems to be a feature of Bittern populations as radio-tracking work at Minsmere has also shown that young birds disperse in late summer but interestingly they appear to keep returning to Minsmere during the autumn and winter. Some birds set up territory in other suitable reedbeds while others return in spring to set up territory at Minsmere itself. So, in East Anglia they appear to be able to hop back and forth between a number of sites during the autumn always with the fall back of returning to the natal site for a period. This obviously helps with maintaining a dynamic population. Here at Leighton the worry is that the dispersing young birds are not able to find suitable sites nearby having to rely on marginal habitats and so perish during the first autumn/winter before they can return to Leighton.

Regarding adult dispersal - there is no evidence that our adults leave the reedbed in summer other than to make short forays to the saltmarsh or Haweswater ".

It would therefore seem that the establishment of small reedbeds in the rest of Lancashire could play a crucial role in the survival of juvenile Bitterns upon leaving Leighton Moss. With Marton Mere now regularly hosting Bitterns through the late autumn how long before one is seen at Brockholes Quarry?

All the known East Lancashire sightings of Bittern are listed below:

1866:   One shot “near Colne” 2 December

1980:   One seen at Stocks Reservoir 26 December

1984:   One photographed near Dinckley, R. Ribble 23 July (ASD)

1997:   One was present at Lomashaye Marsh, Nelson 20-23 February.

Tony Disley (June 2002).

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