Help protect our waterway birds

Our canals and rivers with their banks, reed fringes, grassy towpaths, trees and hedgerows offer waterway birds a rich array of places for nesting, feeding, shelter and protection from predators. Kingfishers, grey wagtails, tufted ducks, terns, sedge warblers and barn owls are just a few of the hundreds of bird species which depend on canals and rivers for their survival. We need your help to protect habitats for our threatened waterway birds.

Your gift will help us manage and protect existing hedgerows and plant new hedgerows, creating vital habitats and sources of food.

The kingfisher rarely lives longer than one breeding season and is vulnerable to cold weather, which prevents it from catching fish. Water pollution also affects the availability of food and flooding can damage this small waterway bird's bankside nesting sites. Your gift will help install special nesting tunnels at suitable waterway sites and help with the sensitive management of waterside trees to provide perches.

The distinctive grey wagtail often nesting in the debris and vegetation that accumulates by the canal lock gates, the movement and cleaning of lock gates make the grey wagtails' nests vulnerable to damage. With your help we will b able to install more boxes for grey wagtails at their most exposed nesting sites.

One of the most important habitats for birds, reedbeds were once common throughout the UK. Providing homes to species such as bittern, a red conversation status bird with only around 75 breeding pairs each year in the UK, it is essential that more reedbeds are created at key waterside locations. With your help we want to repair floating reedbeds, create new reedbeds and better manage existing reedbeds at selected sites in the UK.

Please make a donation today or call 0845 0700 710 (9am - 5pm Monday to Friday).

Television presenter and wildlife film maker, Miranda Krestovnikoff, is supporting the appeal: "Our waterways provide excellent habitats for a wide range of birds including some protected species. By donating to this appeal you can support vital habitat improvements to help ensure the survival of threatened bird species."