A new report, The Breeding Birds of Tyttenhanger Gravel Pits 1967 to 2023 is now available - download a copy here
Since the first breeding-bird survey of Tyttenhanger Gravel Pits (GPs) in the late 1960’s around one hundred bird species have bred on-site. The development of the gravel pits in the late 1970’s and their evolution over the next 45 years has seen breeding species come and go as the habitat has changed.
Through the 1980s and 1990s it was a stronghold in Hertfordshire for both Ringed and Little Ringed Plovers, and also contained good numbers of breeding Lapwing and Redshank. At the end of the last century and in the first twenty years of this century it became the last bastion for breeding Tree Sparrows in Hertfordshire – now sadly gone.
This century has also seen once scarce Hertfordshire species such as Buzzard and Red Kite expand their national range and breed at Tyttenhanger for the first time. Other scarce breeding species in Hertfordshire have also made Tyttenhanger GPs home over several summers and in many cases, stayed to breed. Most notable of the latter are Shelduck and more recently Oystercatchers, which hatched the first ever chick in Hertfordshire in 2008 ,and have gone on to breed nearly every year since.
With the on-going decline in much of the UK’s avifauna, many once-common species have foreseeably bred on-site for the last time in the period covered by this report. However, the disappearance of the likes of Grey Partridge, Turtle Dove and Willow Tit is partially balanced by the first-time breeding of species such as Pochard (2022) and Shoveler (2022) and possibly by the addition of new species in the future - Little Egret, Cetti's Warbler and and Raven heading this list.
Many thanks to Pete Christian and Ricky Flesher for the production of this detailed report
