August may feel like the height of summer in England but for birders autumn is well and truly under way.
The peak season for migrating songbirds comes in September and October but wading birds begin to return south from their Arctic breeding grounds as early as mid-June.
These early arrivals are mostly adults that may have failed to breed and so are cutting their losses, heading down to their winter quarters in southern Europe and Africa.
From August, the smarter, neater juvenile birds appear, especially along the east coast of Britain. These are undertaking their first migratory journey and so are far less experienced navigators than their parents.
One regular species is the little stint, which at barely the size of a house sparrow is our smallest wader. According to a Swedish study, climate change has caused little stints to move south much earlier.
The researchers suggest this is because of huge rises in temperature in their Arctic breeding grounds – changes more extreme than anywhere else on the planet.
These are having a negative impact on numbers of lemmings, causing predators that would normally hunt these abundant mammals to target the tiny waders instead, leading to breeding failure.
