Tittesworth Reservoir is making wet woodland for willow tits

Staff at Tittesworth Reservoir, near Leek in Staffordshire, are shaping wet woodland for willow tits. BBC News reported the work this week. Severn Trent Water, which runs the site, says willow tit numbers in Britain fell by about 96 percent from 1967 to 2023, leaving around 3,400 breeding pairs. About 10 of those pairs are thought to nest at the reservoir. The bird has disappeared from most of southern England, with pockets left in the middle of the country, Wales, and Scotland. The decline is tied mainly to building over land and the loss of wet woods.

Julian Woolford, chief executive of Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, told BBC Midlands Today that a real management plan for the willow tit at Tittesworth is welcome. Staff have been creating more dead wood, where the birds nest, and installing nest boxes made for them. Graham Osborn, biodiversity lead at Severn Trent, said the point is to hand the land on in better shape, and that the work should help later generations of the bird. In July the 145-hectare site received the Wildlife Trusts' biodiversity benchmark and became the largest reservoir of its kind in the UK with that mark. Osborn said the grounds also hold bats, badgers, hedgehogs, and polecats. The report is about habitat on this one site. It does not say the national population has turned around.