I sometimes think Britain wouldn’t be the Britain we love if the weather wasn’t so erratic and of course what would we talk about! But for the management of a nature reserve it does pose its challenges. However against all odds our breeding waders overcame the spring floods and had a very successful season. Breeding waders on the RSPB Exe Estuary reserves have been struggling for many years, this together with holding the largest Devon population of lapwing has put pressure on the importance of future management. In an attempt to try to arrest the decline and reduce some of the factors at play, during the winter of 2011/12 we erected a predator exclusion fence around the nesting area. Comprising 12 strands of electric fence, it gave a fearsome shock particularly to mammals with wet noses! This together with habitat and ditch improvements and better water level management we waited for the spring with everything crossed. I must admit there was a point in time that I wondered whether it was too late and if the population had gone to levels that would be too hard to lift, so this year was the crucial year.
There is a theory that birds respond to areas that have a reduced number of predators and maybe that was the reason why a larger number of birds decided to breed at Powderham Marshes this year. With water at a perfect height and an increase number of pairs the season was going swimmingly – excuse the pun – as then we were hit. Never before had we experienced spring floods like this year – the whole of Exminster Marshes disappeared under a sheet of water. As I stood on the railway bridge at Station Road I watched what looked like a wall of water heading our way – and there was nothing we could do. My thoughts went to our ground nesting birds the lapwing – how would they survive this significant event.
But survive they did, we only lost 4 nests to the flood water and two relayed immediately - adapted for a dynamic system the birds were soon sitting on a replacement nest of eggs. Somehow by hook or by crook and after frantic sluice management, the other pairs survived and we reached the dizzy heights of 19 pairs. The icing of the cake though had to be the productivity, which at this current moment in time looks to be an average of 2 young per pair, which compared to 0.5 last year – is a major step forward in the survival of this population in the future.