Lapwing by Chris Prince
Regular visitors may find this a rather strange title having been used to seeing flocks of several thousand lapwings during the winter months. However, every year in March these large flocks return to their normal breeding grounds in Europe having come to the UK in the autumn to take advantage of our milder climate.
When gone, these birds are replaced by a much smaller number of lapwings returning here to breed, typically in the region of 40-50 birds. But are they actually returning birds, or could they have simply been here all the time and become subsumed by the wintering flocks? We don’t know for sure and the only way to find out is to track the birds’ movements.
The traditional way of doing this is by ringing as prescribed by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the official keepers in the UK of data about bird migration. This involves catching birds and attaching a small, numbered silver-coloured metal ring to each bird’s leg so that if observed again anywhere in the world it can be checked against the ringing record. However, this method suffers from the drawback that it relies on being able to catch the bird to read the ring and this is not easy.
In more recent years the use of colour rings has sprung up which makes it easier to identify individuals by recording the unique combination of colours above and below the bird’s knee when observed from a distance. Some of our visitors may have seen wintering black tailed godwits that have been ringed in this way. As well as colour rings, sometimes small coloured flags are used for the same purpose.
In 2018 for the first time a ringing exercise was undertaken on some of our lapwing chicks. I wasn’t present to witness this but have been advised that it is a very tricky task requiring lots of patience. Apparently, some of our volunteers were spotting birds in West Mead hide and then radioing instructions to the ringer on how to find the chicks trotting around in the rapidly growing rush. Lapwing chicks are very mobile as soon as they hatch and can walk and feed themselves. Several of our birds had a combination of colour rings and black flags attached as well as a more traditional BTO ring.
As the 2019 breeding season has started, we now have volunteers, including myself, going out regularly to observe and record lapwing whereabouts and behaviour with a view to determining where territories are, then nests, hatched chicks and ultimately fledged birds. This will continue until mid-June.
On the 19th I found myself with a colleague Christine, observing lapwings in the large wet field in front of Winpenny Hide, called Big Triangle by our wardens on account of its shape. This has traditionally been good habitat for lapwing breeding with short grass, nearby flood pools nearby and some rushes in which chicks can take cover. First, we observed 2 pairs of lapwings mating which suggests that within a very few days we should see birds sitting on nests incubating eggs.
We then observed a bird, quite close to the hide, with no obvious colour rings but a single black flag on the left leg above the knee and a silver BTO ring. We were slightly surprised by the lack of colour rings, but I have been advised by our Site Manager that the black flag should indicate one of the ringed birds from last year. So this was an exciting observation providing initial evidence that our breeding birds are, as we hope, faithful to the site.
Should any readers find themselves at the reserve and spot any rings or flags then it would be very helpful if details could be reported to Reception in the Visitor Centre. Rings and flags may be attached to both legs either above or below the knee so for a full record it will be useful to note:
left or right leg (seen from the bird’s perspective):
the pattern of colours and flags on the leg above the knee starting from the top;
then similarly the pattern of colours and flags below the knee.
Even if it is not possible to see and record all this precisely it would still be helpful if the presence of a ringed bird could be reported, along with where it was seen.
For the breeding lapwings of Pulborough Brooks, productivity (measured in terms of fledged birds produced per pair) has been increasing in recent years, most likely in response to the enclosure of key areas on the South Brooks by a temporary electric fence to keep ground-based predators such as foxes away from the nests.
In 2018 the average productivity rate was 2.0 fledged birds per pair which is well above the 0.7 average that scientists estimate is needed to maintain the population at the same level. In an era when the lapwing as a UK breeding bird has been in serious decline, due in large part to changes in farming practices, our recent success is good news, even though numbers are still small.
Finally, I should mention that the effort put into managing the reserve to help the breeding lapwings is also having another good effect by attracting breeding redshanks which have a similar habitat requirement. They tend to be rather more secretive in the siting of their nests, but the adult birds can be seen quite frequently feeding round the edges of the flood pools, and during my lapwing survey last week I also recorded 10 redshank sightings, including one pair mating in front of Winpenny Hide. I had not seen any redshanks during my first survey of the same areas on 13th March, so this was welcome progress.
Redshank by Graham Osborne