Flying high: The birds doing brilliantly in the British Isles right now

It was April 27, 1974, and I was looking south from the village of Freckleton over a wide expanse of the Lancashire coastline near the Ribble estuary. I can see in my written record for the day — a notebook marked No 2 now in a shelf of 100 — that I’d listed all the birds present on this beautiful spring morning. The area is still home to the thousands of waders that I’d logged, but pride of place went to a species underlined, encircled and accompanied by a triumphant tick! I was ecstatic. It was a snow-white heron, a little egret and, at the time of my Freckleton visit, there had been only 100 ever in the history of British ornithology. Who could possibly have imagined how this exalted rarity would become so commonplace today we almost take it for granted?

From the Severn to the Wash, it is a default bird of our estuaries, yet in winter any southerly bias disintegrates, with little egrets present from southern Ireland to the River Tyne, from Kent to the Outer Hebrides. They are now routine on the Ribble and at any one moment there are at least 12,000 in Britain.

The little egret is one of the best illustrations of huge changes that have occurred in our bird populations. Alas, the direction of travel for much of our avifauna has been downwards. Since my 1974 egret sighting, the losses are put at 73 million birds. There is no scope for complacency, but it shouldn’t stop us marvelling at some extraordinary gains. The obvious questions inspired by the egret’s rise are why has it happened and what has changed?

The likeliest explanation involves two interlocking elements. The first goes to the heart of modern relations with nature and led to the social movements creating the RSPB here and the Audubon Society in America. It concerned the slaughter of millions, possibly billions, of herons and other waterbirds for their elaborate lacy breeding plumes. These were used in a century-long fashion for feathers in women’s hats, which, by the time of the First World War, had driven birds such as the little egret almost to the wall. The British eventually legislated against the trade, a move aided, ironically, by the arrival of motorcars, which favoured close-fitting cloche-style headgear. The lacy feathers now stayed on the backs of Europe’s breeding herons and, year by year, their numbers rebounded.

A key moment in this story came at the end of the 20th century. In 1990, there were 36 little egrets on the southern-English coast. By 2000, it was 1,018 and 68 pairs had bred, mainly in Dorset. Few places better illustrate the wider pattern of waterbird recovery than Holkham National Nature Reserve in Norfolk, where I was once a warden. In 2010, we were awestruck that, after centuries of breeding absence, six pairs of spoonbills — members of the wider heron family — had nested. Those numbers steadily rose to more than 40 pairs, which have now fledged 748 young, but they were also joined by 15 pairs of cattle egrets, 12 great egrets and 25 pairs of little egrets. The last species has so expanded — a recent survey indicated 2,500 breeding pairs — that we can speculate whether little egrets will become the commonest member of its family in this country. Yet it is equally important to recognise that both our native species, the grey heron and Eurasian bittern, have done well over the same period. When I went to Freckleton in 1974, there were 7,000 pairs of grey herons in Britain. Today, it is 11,000, whereas bitterns hit a new record total of 227 pairs in 2019. The figures bring into focus the second factor in all these developments. Quite simply, we care more.

At a societal level, there is less persecution of birds and more effective legal protection. This has benefited little egrets and grey herons alike, but now in its wake come previously unimagined species that may well become fixtures very soon. They include wetland-dwelling little bitterns, purple herons and glossy ibises. The first of the trio began breeding in 2009, purple herons in 2010 and, last September saw an arrival of 600 glossy ibises right across Britain.

If they become permanent ‘citizens’ they will join one of the largest of all Britain’s wild animals: the common crane, whose own fortunes mirror the same developments. After an absence of 450 years, common cranes returned to breed. In half a century, they have reached 40 pairs from the Norfolk Broads to the Somerset Levels. However, that increase progresses in the same stately manner in which a long-legged crane stalks across the marsh.

As I mentioned, Holkham exemplifies the process, albeit not merely because of an expanding heronry. In winter, those same marshlands play host to birds visiting Britain from Iceland and Greenland. They are pink-footed geese.

In Adventures Among Birds (1913), W. H. Hudson described his Holkham encounter with ‘pinkfeet’ as ‘the most magni-icent spectacle in wild-bird life I have ever witnessed in England’. He guessed his sighting entailed 4,000 birds. This year, the wardens are rather disappointed they have ‘only 42,000’; in 2006, there were more than double that figure. The Norfolk geese have a curious link to the Ribble estuary, because the latter is part of the other core area where pinkfeet winter. Overall, our islands hold 500,000, a fivefold increase since my 1974 Freckleton visit.

A wonderful consequence of this dual concentration is that arrowhead formations cross the skies of middle England as the geese fly back and forth between the areas. Like many towns or cities, my home in Buxton, Derbyshire, shares in the daily drama of their English ‘commute’. Pinkfeet are powerful proof of heightened British wildlife protections, but there is a further factor in their success. Rather strangely, it concerns our national sweet tooth. Sugarbeet production rose massively in the 20th century and, although the green tops of the crops are of little interest to farmers, the geese have come to rely on them. The particular food supply may be inadvertent, but today millions of us delight in spending a small fortune on seed mixes for our garden visitors.

This intentional shift in our behaviour has had major consequences for birdlife. The biggest winners are goldfinches and, in many homes, they even have an allocated dispenser all to themselves. Their seed of choice is called nyjer, imported from Asia, which has helped to drive a near sevenfold increase to two million pairs today.

Another species cashing in on the garden bird-table is the great spotted woodpecker. These glorious pied creatures have also acquired a parallel taste for peanuts and such supplementary winter supplies have boosted their survival, and driven a 378% rise to 130,000 pairs. Sometimes, bird increases are so slow that we barely even register that any change has happened. The nuthatch exemplifies this creeping process. It is the chunky little songbird with a high whistling call and the gift for clambering up and headfirst down tree trunks.

Nuthatches have spread right across Britain into southern Scotland in a manner as undramatic as it is largely unexplained. Climate change could be a factor. The new largesse in our gardens may benefit them. Ultimately, however, the ways in which birds fluctuate in number or distribution is never a linear progression. If I could go back to meet my 14-year-old self at Freckleton I would offer one tip. Nature is never simple, never static, but take in as much as you can, both the commonplace and the rare. Because it is all equally filled with wonder.

This feature originally appeared in the March 4, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.