Mike Drew gave a very full and detailed talk on the Nightingales at Grafham Water and how over the years he has been involved in monitoring their numbers and also their migration patterns.
Mike has worked very closely with the BTO under licence ringing the birds to monitor their territorial habits and their success in navigating long and difficult migrations.
He explained the different calls of male and female birds and how these varied during daylight and night-time.
He related the how the tracking was done using very lightweight tracking devices attached to the birds, these did not impede the birds migration and in fact seemed to prove that survival rates were better than expected.
Some of Mike’s work has been published and used on various TV programmes such as Springwatch, Countryfile.
He was also introduced to Prince Philip when he visited Grafham and a 2 minute slot extended to some 20 minutes as the Prince was fascinated by the detailed information Mike was able to tell him.
We are hoping the present lockdown will ease in time for a planned walk at the end of April.
We will wait and see.
