
The Birds of Needs Ore
By Chris Button
TatNat, 2024
Hbk, 408pp; over 800 illustrations, photographs, graphs and tables
ISBN 978-1-9-998998-4-4; £25
This book reviews 100 years of bird records for this unspoilt part of the Hampshire coast – 277 species in all, including ten ‘firsts’ for Hampshire. Now part of the North Solent NNR, Needs Ore was ‘discovered’ as a birding location by the late John Taverner in 1955; he quickly recognised the importance of the site for wintering wildfowl and waders and breeding gulls and terns. With the agreement of the owners, the Beaulieu Estate, the establishment of a summer wardening scheme from 1962 protected the site from trespassers. This resulted in an astonishing expansion, which culminated in peak counts of around 20,000 pairs of Black-headed Gulls Chroicocephalus ridibundus in the early 1970s, the largest colony in the UK at the time. Along the way, John discovered the UK’s first breeding pair of Mediterranean Gulls Ichthyaetus melanocephalus, in 1968.
Wildfowl and wader counts have been undertaken at the site since the 1950s, and the book examines the trends over this period. Unfortunately, many species have declined after peaking in the later years of the twentieth century. Most notably, peak autumn counts of Spotted Redshank Tringa erythropus reached between 50 and 75 almost annually between 1961 and 1985 but have declined to single figures since. It is not all doom and gloom though, with species such as Cetti’s Warbler Cettia cetti and Pied Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta having colonised the site, and breeding waders prospering as a result of groundbreaking work to protect them from predators.
The species accounts comprise the bulk of the book (280 pages) and there are also substantial chapters describing the different habitats on the reserve and the annual cycle, as well as sections on the history of the site, its management and the monitoring work undertaken.
As well as the authoritative text, the book features the author’s pleasing artwork and a large selection of habitat and species photographs, many taken by local birders. It has been expertly designed by Dan Powell and comes as a sturdy hardback with a laminated cover. A fine example of the local patch avifaunal genre, and exceptional value at £25.
John Clark