For those of you wondering what I am on about, a congregation is a collective noun for our bird of the month, the Golden plover! (It could also have been a wing of Golden plovers, but I prefer congregation).
So why all the chat about Golden plovers! Well, there has been a sizeable flock of over 800 birds using the wetlands recently and it really is a spectacular sight when they all rise up in the air as one, especially if they are in the company of the 500+ Lapwing that are also on site!
So why are they here? Golden plovers have always been a common bird on passage at Middleton Lakes in smaller numbers but it seems that the size of this flock has surprised most of the volunteers and visitors to the reserve with recent counts topping 1000! It could be that they have been displaced from a more favoured area, but what is more likely is that the land use around Middleton has changed, producing more suitable feeding areas for the birds in the crop fields, or maybe they heard just how good Middleton is at the moment and wanted to try it out for themselves...
Golden plovers are a fully migratory bird, meaning that they migrate south for the Winter and North to their breeding grounds in spring. Their breeding grounds are extensive and they breed in areas such as Forsinard Flows in the Highlands of Scotland, Iceland, East Greenland, Scandinavia, Siberia and more in between. They nest in bogs, moorlands and tundra amongst many other habitats, making a small depression on the bare flat ground in short vegetation. They nest in solitary pairs but they will feed in flocks during the breeding season as a method of protection.
There are around 420,000+ birds that over-winter in the UK, often in the company of Lapwings and they fly in tight formation, often calling, giving a fantastic spectacle as they swirl around the sky. The birds that can be seen at Middleton are using the site as a roosting area during the day as it is almost completely surrounded by water protecting them from ground predators and low vegetation with few inclines so they can spot any aerial predators. They are then moving off to the adjacent fields to feed during the night, picking off things like small invertebrates, beetles and earthworms.
This is just a very broad overview of the species but if you want to know more about Golden plover, why not check out the RSPB page, here, or get down to the reserve this weekend and see them for yourself, we would love to see any photos you get!