Brambling (RBBP)

In the 1980s and 1990s The Atlas reported that “in good winters flocks of several hundred are not uncommon”. There has been nothing like that number of birds wintering in recent years and Lincolnshire seems to have done poorly for Brambling compared to neighbouring Yorkshire and Norfolk where such flocks still regularly occur. Wintering numbers tend to be related to beech-mast production, a relatively scarce commodity in Lincolnshire.  Wintering flocks of millions are reported from central Europe. The largest wintering flocks reported in LBR over the five years to 2018 were from Asterby with 60 on December 21st, 2018 and in the same year 50 at Wroot on January 29th. Other than these two exceptions wintering flocks in excess of 25 birds have been rare in recent years. Migration is a different matter. Several sites on the coast experience good Brambling numbers, with autumn being much better than spring.  The best day count in the five years was 461 birds flying south at Gibraltar Point on October 7th, 2018. In the same period Butterwick Marsh had a flock of 200 on October 9th, 2018 and another flock of 80 was around for most of the day at Gibraltar Point on October 13th, 2016.

BTO ringing data shows that foreign-ringed birds retrapped in Lincolnshire have come from Belgium, Finland, Sweden and Norway, and as expected, birds ringed in the county have been retrapped or recovered in those same countries with the addition of Denmark and France. One bird ringed at Seacroft, Skegness in October 2013 was retrapped more than 2,000km north in Norway in May 2015.