Lapwing (Photo: Chris Prince)
It’s always a nice feeling when your hard work pays off. Each year, our reserve team dedicates a large chunk of their time to managing the wetlands for our priority wader species – lapwing and redshank. Both species are very particular about where they like to nest and to make it even trickier; they both want different things! Lapwings look to lay their eggs in areas of short vegetation, allowing a 360° view of their surroundings so they can keep an eye out for predators, whereas redshank prefer to hide themselves and their nest away in taller rushes. This does pose rather a challenge for our wardens in terms of habitat management – how to keep both species happy?
You may remember it was a particularly soggy winter last year which made it difficult for the wardens to do any vegetation management. As a result, they found themselves with a fun new toy to play with – a tracked tractor! This is essentially a tractor with caterpillar tracks, much like those on a tank, and it meant that the team could get out on the brooks to top the grass and rush without sinking down into the boggy ground. Sadly, the tractor was on loan but I believe one is now on the reserve wish-list!
The tracked tractor doing what it does best!
In early March, you have to be careful not to mention the words ‘electric fence’ around the wardens unless you want to make yourself really unpopular! Around 3km of electric fencing was erected on the South Brooks and it’s not an easy job at all but it’s a really important part of predator control on the site. Being ground-nesting birds, wader nests are extremely vulnerable to predation by ground predators such as foxes and badgers who will happily seek out eggs and new chicks. The electric fence largely prevents these animals from getting onto prime breeding sites, giving the lapwing and redshank chicks a fighting chance at survival. However, danger can come from any direction and air-borne predators pose just as much of a risk. We cut back a large area of hedgerow to the left of West Mead hide, removing any potential perching posts for corvids, primarily crows and rooks, to hunt from.
All of this hard work has very much been worth it. This year we had a total of 41 lapwing chicks successfully make it to juvenile stage, giving a productivity of 2 chicks per pair. This is an improvement on last year’s productivity of 1 per pair and our target of 0.7 (although none of us are sure what 0.7 of a lapwing chick actually looks like!) The redshank had a good year too, fledging 10 chicks in total (up on 7 in 2017). This is really good news for both species which have suffered declines in recent years and need all the help they can get; the lapwing is on the UK Conservation Red list and redshank on the Amber list.
As part of a new project to monitor lapwing numbers within the Arun Valley, RSPB Conservation Project Officer Richard Black fitted 11 of the lapwing chicks with colour rings. Keep an eye out in the valley and do let us know if you spot any chicks with this ring combination: right leg – light blue above knee, white and silver below knee/left leg – black flag above knee, light blue and black below knee.
Juvenile lapwing (Photo: Joe Bassett)
Assistant Warden Joe Basset with lapwing chick (photo: David Allcock)
Of course, it would be shameful not to mention all of the brilliant volunteers who contributed to the lapwing monitoring this year. It’s really important to have people out there observing behaviour, counting nests and chicks, and keeping an eye on everything so a big thank you goes out to them!
Please be aware that the electric fence will be coming down during the week of 25th June so there may be some disturbance in front of West Mead hide and across the South Brooks. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.