I’ve been talking about the work we’ve been doing on the Reserve quite a bit and I thought I’d focus on one of the species we hope will benefit from this work. Where ever in the country I’ve worked there’s one bird that always gets me confused. It’s not because it’s particularly hard to identify or that it skulks or hides so you can’t see it. The Cornish call them horneywinks, Shetlanders say Tieve’s Nacket, my grandad would call them Toppyups and when I worked in Yorkshire I was totally confused when I was asked how many Lappy’s there were on the marsh. The most widely used names for this beautiful wading bird are Peewits, green plovers or Lapwings. Northern Lapwing are one of the most widespread of our wading birds. It’s coming up to the time where, when this wind stops if it ever stops, that we will start to hear the distinct sound of lapwing calling and paring off. One of the joys of spring is watching these birds displaying and the amazing sound of their wings and that distinct peewit call.
These birds nests on what we call a scrape which is a small indent in the ground often lined with little bits of plants etc. Whilst looking after the eggs and incubating the lapwing is a thoroughly modern bird and both males and females take turns sitting, warming and nurturing the eggs. Laying 3-4 highly camouflaged eggs the adults go into protection mode. Often the off duty adult will be feeding and watching for potential threats which they will defend the nest from by making a noisy display, aerial attacks or trying to distract the offending threat and get it to move away from the nest. I’m sure you’ve heard a lapwing making an almighty racket and wondered what’s going on. All the time they spends doing this is time away from the nest and time the egg can cool and not incubate properly. It’s a tense time for our lapwings. The chicks then arrive and with it a new challenge. How to feed these hungry things! This is where the habitat comes into it and shallow pools with muddy edges are ideal as they move away from the safety of the tussocky grass. With legs like an AT AT walker lapwing chicks move away from nests soon after hatching.
So why are doing all this work to help lapwings when they are one of the most widespread breeding waders in the UK? Since 1960 lapwing numbers have dropped by 80% in some parts of the country. Lapwings have to raise at least 0.6 young per pair each year to maintain the population. They usually can achieve this in rough grazing and unimproved pastures, but often not on arable land or improved grassland. We’ve taken the area on the reserve and made it as suitable as we can for lapwing and other species such as redshank and also over wintering ducks and other waders. It’ll be exciting times over the next couple of years to see how they respond to our efforts.
Excellent photographs by Judith Rogers as usual !