Cycling for waders

This blog is mostly about Black-tailed Godwits but there’s stuff about cycling too!

If you’re a Black-tailed Godwit, a 2800-mile (4500-km) direct flight from East Anglia to West Africa is estimated to burn 1085 Calories (4500 kJ) of energy (Alves & Lourenço). Fuelled by Cambridgeshire worms, a female godwit that was raised by the Project Godwit head-starting team flew from the Nene Washes to wetlands in south-east Mauritania in just two days. ‘Cornelia’ – as she was named – undertook this marathon journey with no pre-season training. She just took off on 13th August and arrived on the 15th.

To raise money for Project Godwit and for research projects funded by the International Wader Study Group, Jen and Mark Smart cycled from Somerset to East Anglia, on a 600 mile (960 km) journey that links sites that have been visited by head-started Black-tailed Godwit chicks. Each of them burnt 15,000 Calories (62,800 kJ) over the course of eight days, taking in high energy foods as they travel and stopping to feed and rest each night. Unlike Cornelia, Mark and Jen had been training for years.

Quick reminder of head-starting

Black-tailed Godwits breeding in East Anglia face huge challenges, as you can read below. Four years ago, their situation had become so perilous that it was decided that the only way to stop them disappearing completely was to hatch eggs in incubators and raise chicks in captivity. You can read more about head-starting here. Project Godwit is a partnership between RSPB and WWT, with major funding from the EU LIFE Nature Programme, the HSBC 150th Anniversary Fund, Natural England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund through the Back from the Brink Programme, Leica and the Montague-Panton Animal Welfare Trust.

The maps below show the two breeding sites (Ouse and Nene Washes) and all the late-summer passage sites where head-started birds have been seen in England (left), and the international sightings of all godwits ringed in these breeding sites.

International Wader Study Group (IWSG)

The International Wader Study Group brings together everyone who has a passion for waders (shorebirds), the habitats they use and their conservation. Members include research scientists, citizen scientists and conservation practitioners from all around the world. IWSG gives out small grants each year that help to support wader projects around the world. Recent grants have been used to discover the wintering areas of Common Sandpipers, to measure the site-faithfulness of Dotterel and to support projects in Azerbaijan, Albania, Bangladesh & Argentina.

Mark and Jen

Jen Smart has worked for the RSPB for 14 years.  As a scientist, she led RSPB’s research into the conservation problems faced by breeding waders and developed solutions to help these species. See the WaderTales blog Tool-kit for wader conservation. She developed the science programme around Project Godwit and maintains a keen interest in the project. Jen is Chair of the International Wader Study Group.

‘Manea’ arrived at Old Hall Marshes (Kent) with his sister, ‘Lady’, in July 2017

Mark has worked for the RSPB for 26 years and is Senior Site Manager at Berney Marshes, a 600 ha grassland nature reserve with around 300 pairs of breeding waders. See the WaderTales blog Managing water for waders. As well as managing the reserve, Mark works with other land managers across the country to develop and implement ways of improving habitats for breeding waders.

Latest news from Project Godwit

Project Godwit has been trialling the use of head-starting (https://projectgodwit.org.uk/), where young godwits are reared in captivity, safe from predators and potential flooding, and released once fledged. The aim is to boost the number of godwits breeding in England. The cycle route for Mark and Jen links eleven nature reserves in England, managed by a range of conservation organisations, where head-started Black-tailed Godwits have been spotted on migration by local birdwatchers.

Nelson is one of the birds carrying a geolocator but he has not been recaught (yet)

The ride started at WWT Steart Marshes in Somerset; visited by a Black-tailed Godwit named ‘Nelson’ in 2017. Birdwatchers throughout England were put on alert when the first head-started Black-tailed Godwits were released in 2017 but it was a surprise when Nelson headed southwest. Nelson is a star of Project Godwit. He returned to the Ouse Washes in 2018 and paired up with another head-started bird called ‘Lady’. They have met up in each subsequent spring. In February, Nelson spends time on the Tagus Estuary in Portugal but we don’t know whether he is one of the limosa Black-tailed Godwits that winters south of the Sahara.

The map below shows the route taken by Mark and Jen. The original plan was to cycle from Norfolk to the IWSG conference in Germany, which neatly linked the two causes for which they are seeking sponsorship – Project Godwit and the IWSG fund to support wader research. When the conference was rescheduled as an on-line meeting, they decided to join up the godwit dots across England. The 600-mile bike took just over a week.

Jen & Mark’s route links RSPB, WWT, Wildlife Trustand county wildlife sites between Somerset and Cambridgeshire.

The last site to be visited was the Nene Washes where, as mentioned above, the Black-tailed Godwit ‘Cornelia’ returned to breed. Having been raised at Welney, she was released at the Nene Washes on 27 June, 2018, wearing a small geolocator attached to a flag on her lime ring (see earlier picture). She is the only bird for which the RSPB and WWT team have a whole-year migration history. Cornelia was caught on a nest at the Nene Washes in 2019 and her geolocator was removed. In his blog on the Back from the Brink website, Mo Verhoeven shares his excitement when he learned that this young bird had flown directly from the Nene Washes to wetlands in Mauritania in just two days. There is more about Cornelia here.

Conservation challenges

Wetlands are under threat across the globe and it is appropriate that Mark and Jen are raising money for the International Wader Study Group and for Project Godwit. As they tweeted about their travels and talked about Black-tailed Godwits at local press events, at different nature reserves, they revealed some of the conservation challenges that waders face.

The RSPB nature reserve at Titchwell (North Norfolk) is a favourite pit-stop for Project Godwit birds. These three youngsters, all head-started in 2018, visited before flying south.

Project Godwit is not just about head-starting more Black-tailed Godwit chicks. The team is trying to improve the chances for nesting birds out on the Washes, using electric fences and other predation reduction schemes, and through the development of alternative breeding areas that are under less threat of flooding during spring and summer deluges.

Within Britain and when they head south through Europe and into Africa, Black-tailed Godwits are dependent upon a network of sites. Some of them are fully-protected nature reserves, others have been given international recognition as SPAs and Ramsar sites, but there are many other locations that are important but not designated. Sightings of Project Godwit birds and locations downloaded from geolocators will help to identify areas in which birds may be vulnerable to habitat change and new developments.

A new airport that is planned for the Tagus Estuary is a huge threat to limosa Black-tailed Godwits that breed in Western Europe, including the small English population. It’s thought that about half of the Project Godwit birds use the rice fields and mudflats of the Tagus Estuary, as you can read in Black-tailed Godwits are on their way home. As mentioned above, Nelson has been seen in the Tagus Estuary on several occasions (see map alongside). The proposed airport threatens many species of migrant waterbirds (Tagus Estuary: for birds or planes).

An important unknown when trying to conserve our larger wader species is ‘what happens to the teenagers?’. When do species such as Black-tailed Godwits start to breed and what do they do in the period between fledging and breeding? A key part of Project Godwit is to mark chicks in the wild, as well as head-started birds, hopefully answering questions such as ‘what proportion breed in their first year?’ and ‘where do immature birds spend the pre-breeding years’? Perhaps the International wader Study Group will be able to support similar work for other large shorebird species, through its small project grants?

Support for Mark and Jen

This epic sponsored cycle ride is funding work by Project Godwit and the IWSG. It was a great opportunity to thank colour-ring readers who have reported marked birds, to emphasise the importance of protecting networks of sites for migrant waders, and to highlight some of the conservation challenges that lie ahead.

If you would like to help Mark and Jen to support International Wader Study Group Small Projects Grants, please donate here: https://www.waderstudygroup.org/donate/

If you would like to help Mark and Jen to support the RSPB’s contribution to Project Godwit please donate here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/fundsforwaders

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton (@GrahamFAppleton) to celebrate waders and wader research. Many of the articles are based on published papers, with the aim of making shorebird science available to a broader audience.