Many species are now in decline due mainly to changes in habitat and the loss of good foraging crops such as red clover. It is not profitable to look after hives of bees through the winter. Bombus hypnorum , the first species of foreign bumblebee ever recorded in Britain, has been found on the fringe of the New Forest, after somehow crossing the sea from France. It may have been blown across the sea or carried over in a plane or boat. It is common in continental Europe as far north as the Arctic Circle.
Swifts drink, bathe, preen, collect food and nesting material all without alighting.
They sleep on the wing and are the only bird known to mate on the wing. Only 6 of the 25 species which naturalists are fighting to preserve are on the way to or meeting recovery targets set a decade ago, with once-common birds now rare in some areas. Numbers of birds such as the song thrush, skylark and linnet have been halved over the past 30 years. The number of success stories do not outweigh the number of birds that are in decline. The Golden Eagle is to be reintroduced to Ireland almost a century after the species became extinct on the island.