Hundreds of farmers across England are preparing to help boost turtle doves after a 40% increase in breeding numbers in Western Europe from 2021 to 2024.
The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme data show an additional 615,000 breeding pairs gained since 2021 across France, Spain and Portugal.
Farmers across East and South East England are now preparing for the birds' arrival, by creating and protecting farmland habitat features.
These include seed-rich flowering areas and ponds to patches of thorny scrub, as well the creation of tall and wide hedgerows.
The 40% increase in numbers follows three consecutive years of a hunting moratorium across France, Spain and Portugal, where, prior to 2019, around one million turtle doves were being hunted each autumn.
This led to declines seen across the Western European breeding population as a result of both hunting pressure and a lack of good quality breeding habitat.
The moratorium in place since 2021 is the first stage of a hunting management system - “adaptive harvest management” - developed to ensure that any hunting is carried out at sustainable levels.
A bird synonymous with Christmas thanks to the ‘12 days of Christmas’ carol, turtle doves are only found in the UK over the summer months, arriving to breed.
Having migrated through France and Spain in the autumn, joining birds from across Western Europe, the birds winter in West Africa before returning along the same route.
Their soft purring song can then be heard from May to August in parts of eastern and south-eastern England, their strongholds in the UK.
Rick Bayne, senior project manager for UK-based Operation Turtle Dove, said "This excellent news from the wider Western European breeding population is compelling evidence that our conservation strategy for turtle doves is working.
“The combination of ending unsustainable levels of hunting, together with delivering more suitable habitat here on their breeding grounds, is key to numbers of turtle doves increasing again.
"We know the long-term future for turtle doves in the UK needs both actions to happen together – no more unsustainable hunting and good breeding season habitats."
Operation Turtle Dove, a partnership between the RSPB, Natural England, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and Fair to Nature, aims to help the UK’s breeding population of turtle doves to recover.
With the project working hand in hand with hundreds of farmers and land managers, key habitats for the species are being restored.
Dr Guy Anderson, the RSPB's migratory birds programme manager, called on the UK countryside to be ‘turtle dove ready’.
"We know that nature recovery, for turtle doves and other much-loved farmland wildlife, will not be possible without farmers and other land managers," he said.
“The UK sits at the northern edge of the Western European breeding population of turtle doves, and so while we should celebrate the rapid start to the birds’ recovery in the continental scale population, the ‘recovery wave’ is expected to take slightly longer to reach us here in the UK.
"Nonetheless, an army of willing farmers, land managers, communities and volunteers are exactly what’s needed to harness this opportunity for turtle doves.
"The efforts of those involved in Operation Turtle Dove so far have been amazing in installing the necessary habitat features to aid their breeding success when they reach our shores again this spring."
