Birds – Hoopoe – A blog by nhbs

Author interview with Richard Broughton: The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit

Marking the first monograph for either species, Richard Broughton’s The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit reveals the remarkable lives of these wonderful little birds. Compiling decades of personal research, as well as a detailed review of external studies from across both Europe and Asia, it explores each species’ taxonomy, food and foraging patterns, social organisation, challenges and conservation, alongside more than 150 illustrations, maps, charts and photographs.

Dr Richard Broughton is a research ecologist with a wealth of experience across birds, mammals, forests and farmland in Great Britain and Europe. He has studied Marsh Tits, Willow Tits and their habitats for over 25 years, and prior to this he completed a Master’s degree in GIS as well as a PhD in Marsh Tit ecology, before joining the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Cambridgeshire.

We recently chatted to Richard about his inspiration for the book, which challenges he faced when developing such a detailed study of these two species and more.

You have studied Willow Tits and Marsh Tits for much of your career. What initially captivated you about these charismatic birds, and what inspired you to write a book about them?

I had Willow Tits on my local patch in Hull when I was a youngster at school, and I had Marsh Tits and Willow Tits around my first office near Huntingdon when I started my science career. Both species were always a bit special and enigmatic – not so common that you saw them every day, but when you did it was like seeing parallel lives going on around you. They’re a lot like us, mostly preferring to live as couples in stable relationships, with busy social lives and a close attachment to their neighbourhood.

From a research perspective, Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are fantastic species to study. They are widespread from Britain to Japan, they’re territorial and they don’t migrate, so the same birds are present all year round and you can really get to know them – how they communicate, organise themselves within their communities and solve the problems of living in different types of woodland, it’s all really fascinating. And there’s so much that we still don’t know, with lots of discoveries to be made, but also some urgency. We don’t fully understand exactly why they’re declining in many areas, so the inspiration for writing the book was partly to bring together all that we know about their ecology and what pressures they’re facing. If Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are struggling, then we need to listen to what this is telling us about our woodlands and forests.

Both species have suffered severe range declines – how can the general public work to better support these birds amid habitat loss and climate change?

The main thing is to know where Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are still hanging on, and where they are declining – taking part in surveys and reporting sightings to the county recorders and BirdTrack are great ways of helping to monitor both species. Protecting and expanding their habitat is essential, but for that we need to know where they are, and in what numbers.

It’s also important to realise how we can unintentionally make things harder for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits when we do favours for their competitors. There is growing evidence that increasing numbers of Blue Tits and Great Tits could be harming Marsh Tits and Willow Tits by taking over their nests and dominating their foraging space. The vast scale of bird-feeding in gardens, woodlands and nature reserves is changing our woodland bird communities, and it really boosts the dominant species, which can then put extra pressure on Marsh Tits and Willow Tits. For this reason, it’s important to consider the unintended negative impacts of well-meaning interventions, such as bird-feeding and nestboxes, on more vulnerable species like these.

I was surprised to learn about the ineffectiveness of nest boxes in supporting Marsh and Willow Tit populations in relation to competition. Do you think this is also the case for other species across the UK, and what alternatives could we use to mitigate this issue?

The problem with nestboxes for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits is that they’re far more likely to increase the densities of their dominant competitors, especially Blue Tits. If you add more nestboxes to a woodland then you will get more Blue Tits, but Marsh Tits and Willow Tits don’t work that way.

This is because they have much larger territories, and you could fit 15 pairs of Blue Tits into a typical Marsh Tit or Willow Tit territory. These large areas contain enough natural nest sites for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, and so these species are limited by the area of woodland habitat and not by tree cavities or deadwood for building their nests. As such, adding nestboxes cannot increase the numbers of Marsh Tits or Willow Tits like it does for Blue Tits.

This shows how it is important to fully understand a species’ ecology for any conservation actions to work. A better solution is to promote diverse, wilder woodlands that have plenty of opportunities for Marsh Tits, Willow Tits and other woodland species at more natural densities. If not over-managed, woodland can quite quickly develop enough nesting sites on its own.

Within the book you mention the woodland restoration projects being undertaken in Scotland, which are striving to establish woodlands to support native species, including Marsh Tits and Willow Tits. Can re-establishing these complex habitats truly help to encourage population growth? And what would be your main recommendations for large-scale restoration projects with these species in mind?

Expanding woodland habitat is a good way to help buffer Marsh Tits and Willow Tits from population declines, as the losses in Britain are greatest in areas of more fragmented habitat. In Finland, too, logging and habitat loss is driving population declines. Increasing the amount of woodland reduces habitat fragmentation, which in turn helps birds to disperse across the landscape and provides space for more breeding pairs, so it can only help. The natural range of Willow Tits, and probably of Marsh Tits, once covered much of Scotland, and so restoring forest cover in that country could help to re-establish their populations.

Looking ahead, Scotland could eventually provide an important refuge for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, being further from the intensive agriculture, urbanisation and more intense warming of southern Britain. We can look to other natural and regenerating forests in Europe to see what this restoration could look like in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain – varied tree density and structural diversity, lots of standing and fallen deadwood, and plenty of water in streams, pools and soils. Where we still have such places in Europe, like in Poland’s Bia?owie?a Forest, then Marsh Tits and Willow Tits both find places to live in different parts of the same woodland.

The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit is very thoroughly researched and includes an extensive breadth of information. Did you encounter any challenges when developing such a detailed study of these two species?

I was lucky that there have been major studies of Marsh Tits and Willow Tits in Europe over the past century, and I have been involved with several of them in recent decades, so I was familiar with their findings. For other studies, it has never been easier to find and access published papers and reports online, and even to translate them automatically.

Nevertheless, it was still quite challenging to find many studies from Asia, which is where more than half of the world’s Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are thought to live, along with their closest relatives, the Black-bibbed Tit, Caspian Tit and Sichuan Tit. This is slowly changing, as more research is being done in China, Japan and South Korea, but there are still large gaps. In Europe, too, we still know relatively little about Marsh Tits or Willow Tits in some regions. Even in Britain, the recent discovery of a previously unknown population of Marsh Tits in the Scottish Borders shows that we still have things to learn!

What have been some of your favourite moments while researching this book? And did any of your discoveries surprise you?

It’s been a great pleasure to look back through all of the previous studies of Marsh Tits and Willow Tits and pay tribute to the dedicated researchers who spent so many years in the woods and forests, peering into the lives of these little birds. What shone through for me is just how connected the forest ecosystem really is. Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are part of a complex web of life, with some really surprising relationships. For example, Bison and Red Deer stripping bark from trees helps to create the cavities that are the Marsh Tit’s favourite nest sites. Meanwhile, Willow Tits forage on carrion from Wolf kills, which helps them to survive northern winters. At the other end of the spectrum, Marsh Tits and Willow Tits both drink nectar from blossom and might be significant pollinators of woodland shrubs, and they might also be seed dispersers for some woodland plants.

We’re just starting to understand these relationships, but in many parts of Europe they have been broken by the loss of forest species, such as large mammals. It’s exciting to think that nature restoration and rewilding could rebuild some of these ecological networks in our woodlands. Again, there’s still so much to learn about Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, but getting to know them opens a window into the wider forest ecosystem, and the more you look, the more you find.

Finally, what is occupying your time now? Are there new books on the horizon that you can tell us about?

I’m still monitoring my Marsh Tit population at Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire, coming up to 24 years of study, and I’m busy with interesting research at UKCEH on hedgerows, woodland regeneration, sustainable farming and nature restoration. In the past year I’ve been busy as the new Editor in Chief of the BTO’s scientific journal Bird Study, helping other researchers to publish their studies. I’m also still involved with research at the Biaowiea Forest in Poland, which always has exciting opportunities, and last spring I was there finding the nests of Marsh Tits, Willow Tits and Wood Warblers. The Wood Warbler is another declining woodland bird that has lots of really fascinating and surprising behaviour, and that’s another species that I think could be worth writing about.

The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit is available to order from our online bookstore here.

Author interview with Ursula Clare Franklin: Mission Penguin

Following the loss of her husband, Ursula Franklin embarked on a mission to see and photograph every species of penguin in their natural habitat. In this breathtaking book, join Ursula on expeditions to some of the most remote places on earth, from the Falklands to Tristan da Cunha and Antipodes Islands, in search of these much-loved birds. Interspersed with stories from Ursula’s adventures, each chapter explores a different species of penguin, detailing their identifying features, the ever-increasing threats they’re facing, and the conservation efforts needed to ensure future generations can experience the wonder of these animals.

Ursula Franklin is a keen wildlife photographer who grew up in Yorkshire, and is now based in Somerset. She developed a keen interest in photography when she was a child and her wonderful husband supported her passion until his sudden death in 2012. As a way to process her grief and heal, alongside her husband’s constant encouragement for her to ‘do something with her photography’, Mission Penguin was born.

We recently had the opportunity to talk to Ursula about her expedition, how she thinks we can we work to protect these vital species in the future, her favourite memories throughout this journey and more.

Plus, enter our prize draw to be in with the chance of winning one of four exclusive Mission Penguin prints here.

Having travelled around the world and seen every species of penguin in every habitat, which species surprised you the most and why?

Like many people, I had always associated penguins with snow, so it was amazing to discover that some species breed in forests, others in the desert and one species even at the equator. The species that really surprised me, however, and for a totally different reason, was the Royal Penguin. This species breeds on Macquarie Island, and in the north of the island are the rusted remains of huge digestors which were once used to extract oil firstly from seals and then when they ran out, penguins. Millions of King and Royal Penguins were slaughtered leaving just a few thousand birds when the barbaric practice was finally stopped. Having suffered years of persecution by man, I marvelled at how trusting the birds were. As I sat on the beach, groups of Royal Penguins waddled up to me, inquisitively studying my boot laces, camera bag and equipment. They were so curious and seemed utterly fearless. It was hard to imagine humankind betraying such trust. Luckily, over the last 100 years, their numbers have steadily increased and in 2022 they were finally taken off the list of near-threatened species (IUCN red list). Hopefully they will continue to increase despite the human-induced climate change crisis.

Royal penguins waddling across Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island.

You were lucky enough to witness the full, daily lifecycle of a number of penguin colonies by watching them from dawn until dusk, and I particularly loved the photographs of the Gentoo penguins on Saunders Beach at sunset. What does the typical day in the life of a penguin look like?

A day in the life of a penguin varies hugely depending on the time of year, especially during the breeding season, or when moulting. At other times of year, the birds spend their time foraging in the open ocean. During their annual moult, which usually lasts around 3 weeks, they are no longer waterproof so cannot go into the ocean to feed – instead they must stay on land living solely off their fat reserves. The breeding season is when they spend time on both land and sea. For most species, males and females share incubation of the egg/s and often take it in turns to go foraging to feed the hungry chick/s whilst the other parent stays to protect it/them. With some species, as the chicks get older, they are left in a crèche, or some stay in a burrow, allowing both parents to go to the ocean to collect food for their increasing appetites. The birds often leave at dawn when foraging, and the length of time they are away depends on how far they must swim to find food. For some species, warming ocean temperatures have shifted prey populations further from the colony leading to chick starvation and mass breeding failure. When the parents do return with food, some species engage their older chicks in long food chases before finally stopping to feed them. This is done to build up the strength of the chicks prior to fledging and is hilarious to watch. The adults then stay with their chicks at the colony overnight before the whole process starts again early the next morning.

A Gentoo penguin colony at sunset, Saunders Island, the Falklands.

You travelled around the world and have seen so many different places as a result of this project – what was your favourite memory and why?

This is such a hard question. I could say the very beginning of the mission on the Antarctic Peninsula with the sighting of my first penguin – this was a Chinstrap Penguin and has since become my favourite species, probably because the black strap under their chin makes it look as if they are smiling. Or I could go to the very end of the mission at Snow Hill Island with the Emperor Penguin colony, which was like being on the film set of the movie Happy feet and a very fitting and emotional accomplishment of Mission Penguin.

My favourite travel destination, however, is the Falkland Islands. With fewer than 4000 people, beautiful coastlines and over one million penguins of five species I’m sure you can understand why. My favourite island is Saunders Island and my favourite location there is ‘the neck’. The accommodation is very basic and although small can technically sleep 8 in 4 sets of narrow bunk beds. Incredibly, on my last visit, my friend Hazel and I were the only occupants – apart from the penguins of course! What a joy and privilege to be the only humans sharing their world and a memory that will stay with me forever.

The Neck, Saunders Island, The Falklands.

Having witnessed first-hand the negative effects of both climate change and human activity on penguin colonies, and their respective habitats, how can we work to protect these vital species in the future?

Penguins are key indicator species for the health of our oceans and the effects of global warming. Although there are no penguins naturally occurring in the Northern Hemisphere, our everyday actions here will ultimately filter down to the Southern Hemisphere and affect these animals.

One of the most threatened penguins is the African Penguin, and research suggests that this species could become extinct in the wild by 2035 unless we act now. Whilst we have little influence on African governments regarding marine ‘no-take’ zones, limiting coastal development, (oil refineries etc) can still help. For example, all of us can reduce our use of plastics (especially single use), and switch to renewable energy sources.

For more direct and immediate help we can also sponsor penguin nest boxes. African Penguins naturally lay their eggs in burrows which are dug out of layers of guano (bird poo!) laid down over hundreds of years. In the 1800’s most of this guano was collected and shipped to the UK to be used as fertiliser. As a result, there has been a 99% decline in the population over the last 100 years. As land temperatures continue to rise, penguins now nesting out in the open air are either dying from hyperthermia or abandoning their nests to save themselves, leading to mass breeding failure. Carefully researched and crafted nest-boxes that replicate the conditions of a guano burrow are proving effective – to help visit the Saving Penguins website.

A shortage of suitable nesting sites mean breeding African penguins are exposed to the full heat of the sun often with disastrous consequences.

Photographing every species of penguin is no small feat, especially alongside a full-time job! What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and what did you learn along the way?

When I announced to a friend that I was going to photograph every species of penguin in their natural habitat, I had no idea how many species there were or where they could be found. My research took me to places that I had never even heard of and to say many of them were ‘off the main tourist route’ would be an understatement! Simply getting to the required and often incredibly remote locations was definitely the first challenge. Many of these are also found in the roughest oceans in the world, and I suffer dreadfully from sea sickness. Needless to say, I was often very unwell but even that could not detract from the awe and wonder of these amazing expeditions. Once at the location, sometimes I only managed fleeting glimpses of just a few penguins of that species so not many photographs, but I appreciate how very lucky I was to actually see and photograph every penguin species on the first attempt.

The weather also presented significant challenges (especially the wind), and trying to photograph from a Zodiac (Rigid Inflatable Boat) while being tossed around in large swells was at times nigh on impossible. I also needed to keep my equipment warm in Antarctica and dry in the humidity of the Galápagos. Sunshine, although lovely in itself, also made photographing black and white birds more difficult than normal in terms of achieving correct exposure. I certainly learned to tolerate imperfections but also became a better photographer along the way. I also witnessed firsthand how tenacious and resilient penguins are – characteristics that we can all learn from.

The strong wind blowing the crests of these Moseley’s rockhopper penguins also made photographing them more challenging.

Mission Penguin came to fruition as a result of loss and grief, and throughout the book I found it heartwarming to read about the healing effects of your expeditions. How important do you think nature is in healing from grief, and what are the benefits of spending time exploring the natural world?

Nature is indeed an incredible healer. I have lovely memories of my mother taking us out on nature walks when we were young as we didn’t have much money, and nature was all around us and free! I think from that age I learned to appreciate the wonder of nature and delight in simple things, so when grief struck, getting out in nature and reconnecting with life and beauty was essential to my healing. Nature stimulates all of our senses which certainly helped me to feel fully alive even in the context of death. What inescapable joy to hear the birds singing, see the dappled light in a woodland glade, smell the flowers, taste the salty sea air, and hug a tree! Being immersed in the natural world really helps to put things into perspective and to feel part of something much greater than ourselves. In nature I feel fully grounded which gives me an inner peace and the strength to keep going, one step at a time.

Southern rockhopper penguins, Pebble Island, the Falklands.

What’s taking up your time at the moment? Are you working on any other projects or planning any upcoming expeditions that we can hear about?

Following the completion of Mission Penguin I have spent more time delighting in the natural world on my doorstep. In the last couple of years, I have finally taken up gardening, which my husband would have found hysterical having tried to persuade me all our married life! My focus however is gardening with wildlife in mind, and I think we would have had very different definitions of a ‘weed’! I am also rewilding one large area and quickly learned the hard way that rewilding is not the same as letting things go wild! I am still taking lots of nature photographs and readers can see more of my images here.

As well as writing the book, I started giving talks on Mission Penguin to local groups and this quickly expanded to other topics as they keep inviting me back for more. I now have about 6 talks in my repertoire so that is keeping me busy as well as continuing with my singing – another fabulous activity for wellbeing.

King penguins returning from a fishing trip.

I am a firm believer in making the most of every moment. We only have one life, so live it well. Fill it with friends, joy, laughter – and of course, penguins.

Enter our competition to be in with the chance of winning one of four exclusive Mission Penguin prints signed by author Ursula Franklin here – good luck!

Mission Penguin is available from our online bookstore here.