After all the rain over the last few months, the water levels at Beckingham are looking amazing - all the scrapes are full and are spilling out onto the surrounding grassland, creating some great looking flashes across large areas of the site. All this water is proving very attractive to birds, with the following totals absolutely smashing our previous records for the site....
1000 wigeon (previous high total 600)
2000 lapwing (previous high total 1000)
600 golden plover (previous high total 300)
Wigeon, Andy Hay (RSPB-images.com)
The sight of all these birds on the wet grassland is stunning and is quite a spectacle when they all take off together, almost like a starling murmuration! It's great news for our habitat as well, as the more wigeon and water we have, the more the grass growth is grazed and suppressed, getting it into ideal condition for our breeding lapwing come the spring.
We are hopeful that the 2020 breeding season will be more successful than the 2019 one. Over last winter, the water levels were very low due to low rainfall throughout last autumn and winter. This meant that the scrapes were dried out by the end of April and therefore very little food was available for chicks and adult birds. We shouldn't have this problem this year however, looking at how wet the site is now.
Lapwing, Ian Francis (RSPB-images.com)