It's been a while since the last Beckingham blog, so it is well overdue an update. The breeding season was one of good news and bad news, with the start looking very promising, however the weather seemed to play a large part in determining the outcomes of a lot of breeding birds. Beckingham is managed primarily for it's breeding waders including lapwing and redshank. This year we had a record number of pairs of lapwing attempting to breed, with 25 pairs nesting. This smashes our previous high of 17 nests in 2018. We also had two pairs of redshank attempt to breed, equaling our high total from 2018 and a pair of oystercatcher.
However, we had a very dry winter last year, followed by a dry spring and early summer. This meant the wet grassland dried up long before it should, leaving a reduced food source for the breeding waders. Only three lapwing young survived and no redshank or oystercatchers fledged. The lack of food due to the dry conditions causing high chick mortality.
The story is similar for the site's breeding tree sparrows. We had 30 pairs breeding in our nest boxes, again equaling 2018's high total. However only 105 young fledged, again due to unfavourable weather conditions.
There is some good news from the site however, we had good numbers of skylark and meadow pipit breed this year, along with yellow wagtail, shoveler and shelduck.
Our volunteers have been busy over the past few weeks doing some much needed fencing repairs, including of our anti-predator fences that protect our breeding waders and preparing our species rich grassland fields ready for hay cutting.