Now is the time to listen for male bitterns tuning up for spring

But despite everything, for birdwatchers spring is once again firmly on the agenda.

As the floods recede footpaths around reedbeds have gradually reopened again and it is a good time to listen for male bitterns tuning up.

One or two were heard just before the storms but since then will have been displaced by the rising water or have been keeping low down in the reeds.

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Now, as the weather calms down again, they can resume the business of attracting females again – one male can have as many as five – and also re-establishing territories.

They do so by booming to advertise their presence, a deep foghorn like sound which can be heard over two miles away.

At first the sound they produce is a more like a series of grunts than booms because they need time to feed well to build up the powerful muscles needed to gulp in air and expel it again to produce each boom. It will be mid March before they are in full voice again.

Last year was another record one for bitterns with 198 males at 89 sites, up from 188 males at 82 sites in 2018.

This is due to a combination of habitat management and the creation of legally protected Special Protection Areas. But the number of areas has not increased for 20 years, unlike the number of bitterns which are increasingly being forced to nest in unprotected areas where they are vulnerable to damage and disturbance.

The RSPB and other conservation groups are now calling for new environment laws that will ensure adequate funding is in place for more areas after Brexit.

As the winds dropped it has been possible to listen in woodlands again to great spotted woodpeckers drumming, the loud laughing cries of green woodpeckers ringing out, and to listen out for the most elusive of all, the lesser spotted woodpecker.

This is the time they start to drum again and also make a sharp ‘pee pee pee’ call which is often the best way to find them.

Another spring sound are the calls of nuthatches, long drawn out whistles and a sharp ‘kee kee kee’ call very similar to a kestrel’s call.

In some places goshawks are displaying over woodlands, one of the few times when it is possible to get a good view as for the rest of the year they stay under the tree canopy.

Birders had a two-for-one opportunity when they visited Johnny Brown’s Common at South Kirkby with drake ferruginous and drake ring-necked ducks on the same pond.

The ferruginous duck later moved to the Old Moor reserve.

A first winter black-throated thrush continued its stay near Grimsby Institute.

A male black redstart is in a private garden at Knottingley while a flock of 15 waxwings, in short supply this winter, have been feeding on berries in Westfield Avenue, Keighley.