Last year we had an electric anti-predator fence installed around 26ha of the central wet grassland, south of Paddy's Hide. This was primarily intended to prevent Foxes taking Lapwing eggs. Last year in this area, 9 pairs of Lapwing only managed to fledge 5 young. Then came the winter rains and the wet grassland flooded. In April, the benefits of the fence soon became apparent. At the end of the breeding season, our monitoring programme has estimated that 60 Lapwings fledged from 38 nests inside the electric fence. We also had 4 broods of Redshank produce a minimum of 6 fledged birds. Young Redshank are very difficult to track in long grass. Not only that, but the flooded conditions attracted Avocets to breed for the first time on our main site. Avocets are supposed to breed on islands, but the flooded conditions created numerous pockets of land surrounded by water which eventually supported 17 nests, producing 27 fledged young.
Juvenile Avocet at Saltholme by Lockhart Horsburgh.
We're very happy with our shiny new electric fence, even though it cost a lot of money, needs to be checked regularly, weeded, and no-one wants to have 5,000 volts go through them, the benefits to conservation are tremendous.