Robert Hughes

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds · Conservation Science

Over 22 years, waterfowl surveys were conducted in the Flow Country of northern Scotland, to monitor population trends, revealing increases in Mallards, Wigeons and Tufted Ducks and stable Teal numbers, contrasting with national trends. Greylag Goose numbers were erratic. Potential factors influencing these trends include afforestation, predator dy...

Seabirds are among the most threatened avian taxa. Effective seabird conservation requires an understanding of both seabird distributions and habitat usage. Species distribution models can help identify important areas for protection and manage threats to seabird populations. However, populations of the same species may differ in their response to...

Understanding an animal's diet is a crucial component of conservation, but diet data are often labor intensive to collect and are frequently scarce. Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica; hereafter Puffins) are vulnerable to global extinction and have declined in some parts of their UK and Irish range. Differences in population trajectories may rela...

Background In 2019, a wildfire impacted an area of blanket bog and wet heath > 60 km ² in the Flow Country peatlands of northern Scotland, a site of global significance. Unusually the footprint of the wildfire included discrete areas of degraded, restored, and near-natural blanket bogs. Following the wildfire, we surveyed vegetation in 387 quadrats...

Caithness, northern Scotland, has historically been an important breeding area for Great Black-backed Gulls Larus marinus, but monitoring at selected colonies shows that numbers have declined substantially over the past 20 years. To investigate this decline in more detail a survey of the whole of the Caithness coast was undertaken during the 2023 s...

Knowledge of seabird distributions plays a key role in seabird conservation and sustainable marine management, underpinning efforts to designate protected areas or assess the impact of human developments. Technological advances in animal tracking devices increasingly allow researchers to acquire information on the movement of birds from specific co...

Peatland restoration has become a common land-use management practice in recent years, with the water table depth (WTD) being one of the key monitoring elements, where it is used as a proxy for various ecosystem functions. Regular, uninterrupted, and spatially representative WTD data in situ can be difficult to collect, and therefore, remotely sens...

Waterbirds and fish sometimes compete for macro-invertebrate prey. In Scotland, the invertivorous waterbird, the common scoter Melanitta nigra, breeds at oligotrophic lakes with few brown trout Salmo trutta. This study tested whether reducing trout biomass favours this and other invertivorous waterbirds. The study took place in Scotland’s Flow Coun...

Capsule Population trends are estimated for the first time for 12 species based on Shetland Breeding Bird Survey data collected between 2002 and 2019. Aim To provide population trends for a selection of commoner breeding waders and passerines on the Shetland Isles, the most northerly region of the UK, which has historically been under-represented...

On 3rd February 2018, a bedraggled Merlin (Falco columbarius) was photographed in a garden in Scrabster, Caithness. Subsequent examination of the photographs revealed the distinctive and diagnostic tail pattern associated with the North American ‘Taiga Merlin’ F. c. columbarius. It was seen again only briefly, on the 18th. Based on these photograph...

Scottish Birds. Journal of the Scottish Ornithologist's Club

Scottish Birds. Journal of the Scottish Ornithologist's Club

Scottish Birds: Journal of the Scottish Ornithologists' Club

Atlantic Puffins Fratercula arctica were counted at all known colonies in Orkney (excluding Sule Skerry) during the 2016 breeding season. Counts of individuals (IND) were made during pre-laying and incubation at all 20 sites and at six sites where burrows where physically accessible. In 2016 the Atlantic Puffin population of Orkney was estimated to...