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There are 47 individual Wildlife Trusts covering the whole of the UK and the Isle of Man and Alderney. Together The Wildlife Trusts are the largest UK voluntary organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild places everywhere at land and sea. They are supported by 800,000 members, 150,000 of whom belong to their junior branch, Wildlife Watch. Every year The Wildlife Trusts work with thousands of schools, and their nature reserves and visitor centres receive millions of visitors. The Wildlife Trusts work in partnership with hundreds of landowners and businesses in the UK. Building on their existing network of 2,200 nature reserves, The Wildlife Trusts recovery plan for the UKs wildlife and fragmented habitats, known as A Living Landscape, is being achieved through restoring, recreating and reconnecting large areas of wildlife habitat.

The Wildlife Trusts also have a vision for the UKs seas and sea life Living Seas, in which wildlife thrives from the depths of the oceans to the coastal shallows. In Living Seas, wildlife and habitats are recovering, the natural environment is adapting well to a changing climate, and people are inspired by marine wildlife and value the sea for the many ways in which it supports our quality of life. As well as protecting wildlife, these projects help to safeguard the ecosystems we depend on for services like clean air and water. All 47 Wildlife Trusts are members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (Registered charity number 207238). To find your local Wildlife Trust visit wildlifetrusts.org Bloomsbury Natural History An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015 All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data has been applied for. ISBN: PB: 978-1-4729-2179-6 ePub: 978-1-4729-2180-2 ePDF: 978-1-4729-2300-4 To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters. Birds of coastal habitats There are several bird families which are rarely seen anywhere except coasts and at sea. Birds of coastal habitats There are several bird families which are rarely seen anywhere except coasts and at sea.

They include auks, terns and shearwaters birds that breed on cliffs, clifftops or beaches and spend their winters ranging many miles offshore. Other bird groups have strong ties to the coast, finding much of their food on, in or by the sea at least for part of the year, but also spend some of their time inland they include gulls, some ducks and geese, and most wading birds. Then there are the birds that have no particular requirement to live or breed by the sea but nevertheless often do use coastal habitats as well as inland ones. Bird movements are not completely predictable and in theory, any of the 200 or so British breeding birds, and the many others that are either common or rare non-breeding visitors, could be observed in a coastal setting. However, this book limits its scope to the 180 species that are particularly typical of seaside habitats and most likely to be encountered by people exploring the coastlines of Britain. Habitat types Where land meets sea, there may be a gently sloping sand or pebble beach, a vast expanse of marshland that grades into saltmarsh and muddy shore, a sheer cliff-face, or a more gradual series of rocky steps to sea level.

Depending on the angle of the shoreline relative to prevailing wave direction, some shores become eroded while in other areas the sea deposits material, building beaches. Hard rock erodes more slowly than soft rock, and the type of material carried downriver influences the types of beaches that form near the rivers outflow into the sea. Soil composition and exposure to wind influences the kinds of vegetation that will grow on clifftops and above the waterline on beaches. Different birds are adapted to exploit different kinds of coastal habitat. Many of our true seabirds those which habitually forage actually on or in the sea, make use of cliff-faces, as these offer great protection from predatory mammals like rats and Foxes. Islands that are entirely free of such predators are of even higher importance to seabirds.

Because the seabirds find their food in the open ocean, they have no need to defend a territory on land beyond the immediate surroundings of their nests, so can breed in huge and dense colonies. These seabird cities are one of the most dramatic wildlife spectacles available anywhere in the world the sensory impact can even be almost overwhelming. By the end of summer, though, such colonies are deserted, their occupants roaming distant seas. These birds have no need to go near land at all for any purpose other than breeding. Estuaries and mudflats are also of great importance to birds. On saltmarshes, dense beds of eelgrass feed the thousands of Brent Geese that migrate to Britain from the Arctic every winter.

The expanses of mud revealed by the outgoing tide are rich with organic material and support huge quantities of burrowing invertebrate animals tiny gastropod snails, various kinds of worms, bivalve molluscs such as cockles, and crustaceans including shrimp and crabs. These provide food for wading birds including sandpipers, godwits and plovers, which form enormous flocks at key estuarine staging posts during their southbound autumn migration. These flocks may include 10 or more different species, which avoid direct competition by specialising in different prey the differences in their bill shapes indicates whether they are deep or shallow probers, or surface pickers. Beaches and rocky shores do not attract such vast numbers of birds, but support a range of specialised representatives from a range of bird families. Undisturbed sandy and shingly beaches are breeding grounds for terns and Ringed Plovers, and in winter are foraging grounds for Snow Buntings and Shore Larks.

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