Losers - 1. Willow Tit

This is the third in an occasional series looking at bird species that have fared well - and those not so well - across the uberpatch over the last 50-odd years.

I first set foot on Epsom Common (Surrey) in December 1974. I had been decanted from a bus that had stopped on the Ashtead Road, then followed a public footpath that took me over a railway line and on to an open area that was characterised by scrub, mature Silver Birch, muddy tracks and a fully-fledged woodland in the near distance. The photograph above was taken in February 2023 which, apart from the newly laid footpath, is a fairly good representation of what the area looked like 52 years ago, at least if you can imagine that the tree height was generally lower. Over the following two years this became one of my regular birding haunts, always coming onto the common from this direction and, more often than not, bringing me into contact with Willow Tits, regardless of the time of year.

The nasal, slightly sneery call was a dead giveaway that one of these bull-necked tits was in the vicinity and it would be an unusual visit indeed if I did not connect - it was almost a given that they would be there. It was fortuitous that Marsh Tits were also present, which helped me climb the ornithological learning curve as each species could be directly compared (plumage, build and voice). Simply put, Willow Tits were taken for granted. The 1974 Surrey Bird Report states: 'Willow Tits reported from about 30 localities during the breeding season' with the Report of 1978 adding  'In a survey of Wimbledon Common and within a 5km radius of Oxshott Station, WRI located 24 breeding pairs and found 12 nests in 13 areas.' As can be seen, they were not uncommon.

As the 1970s trundled on I spent most of my birding time at Beddington SF, Dungeness and on nationwide twitches. Local birding took a back seat and my searching of Willow Tit friendly habitats was almost non-existent. Even so, Willow Tits would pop up close to home, with continued sightings from Epsom Common (including four on 24 February 1978) as well as birds on Ashtead Common, Walton Heath and Headley Heath. Beddington SF even got in on the Willow Tit act with wanderers recorded on 12 September 1978 and 17 June 1979 (the latter trapped) - these were (and are) patch gold. It used to make my day to regale the details of these birds to Gary Messenbird, who would then tie himself up in knots of angst at my good fortune even though he had seen many more species at the sewage farm and of far greater value than me! Would he have swapped his Beddington Killdeer or Glaucous-winged Gull for one of them? I doubt it. Sadly, Gary passed away recently. It was pleasing to know that his funeral was attended by a number of the other Beddington birding legends. RIP Gary...

By the start of the 1980s it was getting harder to find Willow Tits on Epsom Common. I still recorded them, but the idea that they were a shoe-in had disappeared. A wanderer at Nonsuch Park on 25 September 1983 was a great surprise. And it came to pass that in 1989 I saw my last Surrey Willow Tit, fittingly on Epsom Common. They hung on there for a bit longer, but by the turn of the Millennium they were becoming very hard to nail down in the county. It became a bit of a mythical bird thereafter with many reports disbelieved and those proven were subject to twitches -there is a thread on a birding forum that deals with this very matter. As far as I can ascertain, the last multiple-observer Surrey Willow Tit was in early 2011.

Why have they gone? Well, it isn't just Surrey that they've disappeared from. Across Britain the species is steeply in decline, the reasons being put forward as to why varying from a drying out of habitat, over-management of woodland, nest predation by Great Spotted Woodpeckers and competition from the more dominant Great and Blue Tits. By 2021 the closest breeding populations to Surrey were in Norfolk, Devon and Hampshire, although from what I gather they are not doing very well at all. 94% of British birds have gone since the 1970s. With dwindling numbers at fewer sites and these becoming further apart, the future is indeed bleak for this charismatic tit.