Thanks to volunteer Phil for his report. Phil helps us to monitor the breeding lapwings as well a being one of our regular 'hides & trails' volunteers.
The lapwing is one of the iconic species of Pulborough - this beautiful bird appears on much of our signage and sometimes heads up our web pages.
And yet the report from Anna and Gary on the Breeding Bird Survey only mentioned lapwings as lunch for our resident juvenile peregrine and I thought it was time to redress the balance by reporting on their breeding season.
With the UK population in decline we do our best to encourage lapwings to breed here and closely monitor how successful they are. So throughout April to June a small group of volunteers is involved in surveying the reserve to help our wardens establish how many pairs are attempting to breed, locate nest sites, hatched chicks and eventually fledged birds. We also look out for signs of breeding snipe and redshank but these are much more difficult to see so the main concentration of effort is on the lapwings.
Lapwing courtship display flights are one of the key sights of spring here as they loop the loop making astonishing twisting and turning manoeuvres. Having progressed to mating they then nest quite openly creating a small depression in open bare ground or short grass to lay their eggs.
The difficult part then begins as the lapwings have the job of defending against predators, the most common of which here are foxes and crows, but the nests are also vulnerable to trampling by deer and grazing cattle. And this year they need to worry about the peregrine which could make an easy lunch from a sitting bird. Watching lapwings defend their nests against crows is not an uncommon sight and can be quite thrilling as they are very feisty. On one occasion last year I saw a lapwing rise from a nest, fly very fast at a nearby crow on the ground and turn it onto its back, one of my wildlife highlights of the year.
After the eggs hatch the chicks will be immediately walking and the mother will typically lead them into cover usually in some of the more dense patches of rush in our wet meadows. They then face a difficult few weeks before being able to fly as there are several land based and aerial predators to contend with. According to research a rate of 0.7 fledged birds per pairing per year is needed to maintain the population. Sadly our local figures are below that at 0.6 last year, although that was a little up from 2014 so a small encouraging sign. It is also encouraging that other RSPB reserves with more favourable local circumstances have breeding success considerably better than the target rate.
Visitors to West Mead Hide will notice the electrified fence surrounding the immediate area. This is an attempt to reduce predation by keeping foxes out but is only temporary and will have to be taken down and stored away in due course. It has only been used for the first time this year, although a similar fence used last year on the South Brooks has also been erected again. The amount of effort we put into trying to protect the lapwings is perhaps a sad reflection of how their decline, largely down to changes in farming practices, has reduced the numbers to a point where it is more difficult for the population to survive natural losses due to predation.
Just before my recent holiday I had spotted my first 2 chicks of the year on the South Brooks, probably just a few days old. So returning on 17th I had high hopes of finding them significantly bigger, but they were nowhere to be seen. This was naturally disappointing but I consoled myself that some of the rushes are quite high and I could hear adults calling perhaps to warn chicks of danger.
On the rest of the reserve I found 5 nests I’d not seen before, 2 of them very visible on the largest island just in front of West Mead hide so that was some compensation for not finding any chicks.
By Friday one of the nests on the North Brooks had clearly failed and we’ve had at least 4 other failures so far. However I then discovered reports of chicks on the whiteboard in West Mead hide and after a second visit there found 2 chicks half hidden in the waterside vegetation on the far side of the pool. Where the nest was that produced these chicks will never be known as it didn’t show up on any of the marked up maps produced by myself and the other volunteers. This illustrates that it pays not to be too disappointed if a nest fails as chicks can appear seemingly out of nowhere. The nature of the terrain and the limitations on where we can survey from without disturbing the birds and other wildlife mean that we will never have a full precise picture of all the nest sites.
We are still hoping for a decent crop of fledged birds and should be able to derive a complete picture after the end of June.