Will head-starting work for Curlew?

83 captive-reared Curlew were released successfully in 2019, over 130 in 2021 and a similar number in 2022 but this does not mean that head-starting is a solution to England’s Curlew problems. We don’t yet know the proportion of youngsters that survive the difficult ‘teenage years’, how many will find suitable breeding habitat and whether these birds can reliably raise chicks of their own. What have birds such as 7K, pictured here, revealed and what might happen next?

Exciting news

There has been some great TV and press coverage of head-started Curlew this summer (2022), with films of captive-reared birds being released from pens and flying for the first time. But what does the future hold for naïve birds that take to the air in Shropshire & Powys, the Severn & Avon Valleys of western England, Cornwall, Sussex and Norfolk? The first signs are good, as illustrated below in maps published by the BTO for the birds that they are tracking in Norfolk.

Satellite-tagged birds released at Ken Hill (Black stars – close to the Norfolk coast) can be seen flipping backwards and forwards between the mudflats and their release site, before beginning to explore more of the Wash estuary.

Birds released further inland, on The Sandringham Estate (White stars), started foraging in grassland areas and it took a while until any of these birds discover the coast. One bird “7Y” moved onto a little-used airfield (below), where it was seen with a flock of adults. It appears to have adopted a mudflat/grassland tidal routine, involving ‘commutes’ of ten miles each way, possibly having been guided by the adults (top row, third from the left).

One of the Sandingrham youngsters joined up with a flock of adults on an airfield five miles from the release site

It is easy to get ‘wowed’ by the TV reports and the individual stories of tracked birds but these are early days for Curlew head-starting. There’s a lot still to learn!

Why head-start Curlew chicks?

This Curlew is nearly ready to fledge

The Eurasian Curlew is in trouble, as you can read in the WaderTales blog “Is the Curlew really near-threatened?”. Annual survival rates of adults are high but productivity is low, with an estimate of 10,000 too few youngsters being fledged each year, to maintain population levels in the UK. The Irish Curlew population has crashed, providing dire warnings of what may happen soon in Wales, where there has been a decline of 73% since 1995 (Breeding Bird Survey). In southern England, most of the losses happened before 1995 and only a few populations remain, hanging on in areas such as Breckland in East Anglia.

Lessons from Black-tailed Godwits

We know that head-starting works well for limosa Black-tailed Godwits breeding in East Anglia but there was no guarantee that this would be the case when the WaderTales blog Special Black-tailed Godwits was published in 2017, to coincide with the departure of captive-reared birds from their WWT Welney release site. When the first birds not only returned in 2018 but actually raised their first chicks (see Head-starting Success), the approach looked to be successful. Over the following years, with more releases, the godwit population in the Ouse and Nene Washes has increased significantly. This temporary relief package for a beleaguered population has worked well, providing time to try to improve breeding conditions in the wild, so that Black-tailed Godwits can look after themselves. Head-starting is an intervention of last resort and cannot be a long-term solution to the problems faced by the species.

Young Curlew is now identified as 2X

It is possible to support local populations of scarce birds, such as Bitterns and Little Terns, with interventions such as increasing areas of suitable habitat and protecting nest sites, but doing the same for Curlew will be more of a problem. Here, the challenge is to halt a decline of a species that breeds across wide areas of the UK, mostly on farmed land that is not being managed for conservation. Intensive, local action is not going to be enough. This is going to need teamwork between landowners, conservation organisations and volunteers – acting at a scale that has not been tried previously. Perhaps head-starting will help?

A pragmatic plan

The most recent UK population assessment of Curlew, in British Birds, suggested that there were 58,500 breeding pairs in 2016. Numbers have almost certainly dropped since then but the species is nowhere near as threatened as England’s breeding Black-tailed Godwits. The biggest Curlew head-starting programme, led and funded by Natural England, was a response to an opportunity to use unwanted Curlew eggs – not a ‘last-chance’ solution, as it had been for Black-tailed Godwits. Each year, Curlew eggs were being collected on RAF airfields, under licence, to deter adults and reduce airstrike risk. Thanks in no small part to Natural England’s Graham Irving, many of these eggs are now being head-started, instead of destroyed.

What happens to head-started birds?

Curlew eggs in an incubator

The Natural England project builds upon the experiences of the Curlew Country team, working in the Shropshire hills and Powys borders. They released 6 head-started Curlew in 2017, 21 in 2018, 33 in 2019 and 34 in 2021. Raising extra chicks is part of an initiative that involves a broad range of stakeholders. See their website for more information.

The first stage of the head-starting process works well. Aviculturalists can rear and release chicks, with very high rates of success. They are learning more and more about the best diets, appropriate husbandry and the release process. Individual chicks wear small colour-rings, so that progress can be monitored daily, and they receive leg-flags and get weighed and measured before release. For instance, the young Curlew 7K featured above is a GPS tagged male that weighed in at a respectable 550 grammes when it was transferred to its release site on The Sandringham Estate, on 14 July 2022. By the end of August, it had moved to the Wash Estuary, as you can see in the figure above (top left map). There was a December report of 7K from a piece of amenity land on the edge of a new housing development in Hunstanton.

Before transfer to The Sandringham Estate release site, a young Curlew is checked over by a vet

From the start, the Natural England project has been built on partnerships. In the first year (2019), eggs were hatched and chicks were reared at WWT Slimbridge. Fifty young Curlew were released near-by and the first of these birds (wearing ring number 23) was found nesting near Gloucester in 2021, raising one chick of his own. In 2022, three years after release, five of the head-started Curlew were on breeding sites in the Severn and Avon area and one bird had moved to the Thames Vale. Male “23” shows that head-starting can add more Curlews to the breeding population but is he exceptional? What proportion of released birds make it this far and go on to raise chicks? The video by Kane Brides in this WWT blog tells the West Country story so far.

After a Covid-caused hiatus in 2020, the head-starting project expanded in 2021, with birds reared at both WWT Slimbridge in Gloucestershire and Pensthorpe in Norfolk. Richard Saunders, the Senior Ornithologist for Natural England, recognised the importance of learning what happens to newly-released fledglings and of monitoring potential recruitment. Working with Sam Franks of BTO and with lots of support from others, the Pensthorpe-reared Curlews are starting to reveal some of their secrets.

Where will the Pensthorpe birds set up home?

Most waders are philopatric; when they look for breeding sites, they tend to return to places close to the places in which they were raised. The release sites in North Norfolk were chosen not only because they provided suitable conditions for growing teenage waders, with low predator numbers and adults feeding nearby, but also because they are relatively close to current breeding sites, such as Roydon Common and the heaths of Breckland (see Curlews and foxes in East Anglia). There are also airfields, of course, and it will be unfortunate if birds choose these sites, given that eggs were removed to try to reduce bird-strike risk.

Radio tag (left) will drop off when juvenile feathers are replaced. Satellite tag is mounted on a temporary harness and worn like a rucsac.

All of the chicks are colour-ringed, some of them are radio-tagged and others are GPS-tagged, prior to release. By following tagged birds, as they explore the area around the release sites, the project aims to understand more about habitat use and to see if these naïve birds seem unduly prone to predation, given that they have not been trained to look out for danger by watchful parents. GPS tagging helps to paint the bigger picture; would birds move to the mudflats of the Wash and spend the whole winter in Norfolk or would some move on, to southern England, Ireland or France, for instance? These data will hopefully be augmented by reports of colour-ringed birds that do not carry tags.

2C takes to the air after release at Ken Hill

The first results have been encouraging. For example, a GPS tagged female from the first cohort released in Norfolk in 2021, wearing flag 0E, has followed the ‘stay local’ option. She spent the winter on the saltmarshes of RSPB Frampton, on the Wash in Lincolnshire, and has largely stayed on the south shore of the Wash through her first summer, showing no evidence of visiting any type of breeding habitat yet. A male Curlew wearing flag 4P has been more adventurous, spending the winter on the Exe Estuary in Devon, a site used by some adult Curlews that breed in Eastern England.

The amazing left-hand map below shows the route taken by ‘6Y’, one of the first batch of 2022 birds to be released on The Sandringham Estate. The story of this bird is told by the BTO’s Dr Sam Franks:

“The first of this year’s birds to migrate away from Norfolk departed at sunset last Wednesday & arrived on a Staffordshire field at sunrise on Thursday. It then flew towards Ireland & made an anxiety-inducing trip out into the Atlantic before returning to dry land.”

The right-hand map shows an overnight flight by ‘9L’, one of the last birds to be released from Ken Hill. This bird, pictured to the right , set off on the evening of 16th September, flew southwest overnight and headed south when it ran out of land. It landed in France at 01.30 on 17th. Although there is supposed to be a Curlew hunting ban in France (see this blog), three satellite-tagged birds from elsewhere in Europe were shot in the first weekend of the 2022 autumn hunting season. Will 9L survive the winter?

Data generated by colour-ring sightings will be analysed to check whether annual survival of youngsters in their first couple of years are consistent with figures for wild-reared chicks. This follow-up work is really important – the head-starting operation may seem to be successful but if few chicks survive long enough to breed then alternative approaches may be needed. Sightings of colour-ringed birds provide important information to add to data collected from tagged birds, which means that there is a vital role to be played by birdwatchers.

Around England

People care deeply about Curlew, as Mary Colwell explored in a recent book, reviewed in the WaderTales blog Curlew Moon, so it is not surprising that landowners feel inspired to help the species, by releasing birds on their own land. An attempt is being made to boost a tiny population on Duchy of Cornwall land on Dartmoor, using eggs from East Anglian airfields that were hatched at Slimbridge, and a licence has been granted to take eggs from a site in Northern England to be reared in Sussex, on an estate that appears suitable but where Curlew do not currently breed.

Release sites for these translocated birds do not hold many (or even any) Curlew so it will be interesting to learn whether the behaviour patterns of these fledglings are different to those of birds released in Norfolk and in the Severn and Avon Valleys of western England. All birds are being ringed, by WWT, GWCT and BTO ringers, with every report of a marked bird adding to our understanding of the success of the various projects. In each case, hopefully there will be enough money to deploy dedicated fieldworkers to monitor what happens to the released birds during the crucial first few weeks of independence, so that fledging rates can be accurately assessed, and to monitor return rates in subsequent breeding seasons. For slow-maturing birds, this follow-up work will involve a five-year commitment.

Maximising effectiveness

The work being funded by Natural England in East Anglia is expensive. It will be judged as successful if released birds augment local populations, whether these be in East Anglia (as hoped) or in another part of lowland England. If birds choose to breed in the North of England, where numbers are still high, or even overseas, then that may make it difficult to justify the expense of further rearing and monitoring work.

There is a concern that head-starting will be seen as a solution to the problems being faced by Curlew. It isn’t! The estimated shortfall in fledged chicks is 10,000 birds per year, across the whole of the UK, and head-starting will never make a big impact on that number. It may be a way to boost numbers in lowland areas, from which the species would otherwise be lost, but only if the conditions for successful breeding can be created and maintained. This means tackling the thorny problems of habitat degradation and predator numbers. Head-starting may seem like a dynamic intervention but if birds are released into areas where breeding success is too low then it’s not going to produce a sustainable solution to the problems being faced by England’s Curlew.

Photos of ringed birds are particularly appreciated

The Norfolk head-starting project would appear to tick all the right boxes – release sites with low predator numbers, right next to an estuary with lots of Curlew and with successful breeding sites near-by. Head-started birds soon start to explore the mixture of arable and tidal resources available to them and it looks as if early-years survival rates might be as high as expected of wild-reared birds. Despite all these positive signs, it will be a couple of years until this year’s young Curlew start breeding – somewhere – and that will be the crucial test of head-starting. Meanwhile, it is hoped that birdwatchers will look out for colour-ringed birds, so that survival rates can continue to be monitored. Every Curlew counts!

Norfolk-ringed head-started Curlew wear yellow flags, each with number & letter, immediately above an orange ring. Please report sightings of colour-ringed head-started Curlew using THIS LINK.

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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.

Is the Curlew really ‘near-threatened’?

If a Curlew can live for over 32 years and there are flocks of 1000 in Norfolk, how can they be described as near-threatened? 

Dark times lie ahead for Curlew? (© Graham Catley)

Thirty years ago there were eight members of the world-wide curlew family but now we may well be down to six.  The planet has lost one species, the Eskimo Curlew, with no verified sightings since the 1980s, and probably the Slender-billed Curlew as well.  Of the others, Far Eastern Curlew and Bristle-thighed Curlew are deemed to be endangered and vulnerable**, respectively, and our own Curlews are classed as near-threatened, which is the next level of concern. This may seem strange, especially when flocks of 1000 can be seen on the Norfolk coast.  However, evidence suggests that we should take heed of what is happening to other members of the curlew family, as we consider the future of this evocative species with its wonderful bubbling curl-ew calls.

** Bristle-thighed Curlew has now been changed to ‘near-threatened’. Graphic alongside has been changed.

Our Curlew – more properly called the Eurasian Curlew – was until relatively recently a locally popular game species in Britain, especially in September and October, when birds are reputed to be particularly flavoursome.  A male Curlew is equivalent in weight to a Wigeon (or two Teal) and the bigger female may well be as heavy as a Mallard, so it is not surprising that they were worth targeting.  They came off the British quarry list in 1981.

Purple dots indicate where British/Irish ringed Curlews have been recovered and orange dots show ringing sites of birds found here and wearing foreign rings. Maps of movements can be found at http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ringing/publications/online-ringing-reports

The Curlews that we see on the Norfolk coast in autumn and winter are drawn from a wide breeding area; some are of British origin but many are from Scandinavia, Finland and Russia.  The Wash Wader Ringing Group recently received a report of a bird that was ringed in Norfolk in September 2000 and recovered in Izhma in Russia in May 2014.  At 3300 km (2000 miles) this is nearly as far away as the furthest east dot on the map of Curlew recoveries, shown here and published on the website of the British Trust for Ornithology.  The bird was an adult when ringed so must have been at least 15 years old when shot.  This seems like a good age for a Curlew but is less than half of the British longevity record, set by a chick ringed in Lancashire in 1978 and found dead on the Wirral in 2011.

Curlew mortality is higher in severe winters (© Graham Catley)

Curlew numbers on the Wash, which sits between the counties of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, increased dramatically when shooting ceased in 1981, although milder winters could have also have been influential.  In the five years immediately before the ban, the average maximum, winter Wetland Bird Survey count on the Wash was 3281, rising to 9642 in the period 2006/07 to 2010/11.  There were similar increases on the North Norfolk coast and a bit further south at Breydon Water.  The broader, national picture is one of increase between 1981 and 2001, although generally at a lower level to that seen in Norfolk, followed by a steady, shallow decline.  If numbers are higher than they once were does this mean that we should be less concerned about Curlews – and what is the justification of the species’ near-threatened designation?

Curlews fly vast distances to spend the winter on the estuaries of Britain & Ireland (© Graham Catley)

Conserving migratory species is difficult because individuals rely on different resources in different countries at different stages of the year.  For Curlews, there is evidence that breeding season problems are at the heart of large decreases in numbers in Russia, through the Baltic and into The Netherlands – the countries from which much of the wintering population on the east coast is drawn.  According to the European Commission’s species management plan, drivers of decline include wide-scale intensification of grassland management for milk production, land-abandonment and increased predation in some areas.  Autumn, winter and spring hunting is thought to have had a lesser but contributory effect to the long-term losses, with hunters across the European Community shooting between 3% and 4% of the population each year.  In the last twenty years, within the EC, hunting of Curlew has been confined to Ireland, Northern Ireland and France.  Much of this shooting pressure was and in France, where coastal hunting of Curlew was reinstated after a five year moratorium but has since been suspended again. Read blog about this here.

Focusing on Britain and Ireland, we have seen major losses in our breeding populations.  In Ireland, the Curlew population is estimated to have dropped from 5000 to 200 pairs in the twenty years between 1991 and 2011 (with further declines since – see Ireland’s Curlew Crisis blog below). There has been an 80% decline in Wales and other losses elsewhere.  There’s more about these distributional changes in a 2012 article written for the BTO website.

Curlew productivity in several areas appears to be very low and it is possible that the adults we are seeing are part of an ageing population.  As has been shown in seabirds, counts of adults can give a false sense of security, as it is easy not to notice that there is little recruitment of new, breeding adults into the population, with obvious long-term consequences.

Graph shows the changing Curlew population in Great Britain (Wetland Bird Survey)

The decline in the number of breeding Curlew in Great Britain is clearly reflected in monthly, winter counts undertaken by volunteers on west coast estuaries.  On the Dee, for instance, the average peak-winter count dropped from 6109 in the early 1970s to 4348 in the five years after the shooting ban, rose to 5081 in the late 1990s but then slipped back to 3802.

In Ireland and Northern Ireland, a total ban on shooting Curlew was announced in 2012, brought in once it was clear that the estimated November harvest of between 6% and 8% was unsustainable and set against a background of the collapse of the local breeding populations.  The same local reasoning lies behind continuing protection in Wales, western England and in much of Scotland, especially at a time when financial support to land-managers is being used to try to bolster British breeding numbers.  In eastern England, Curlew conservation has a more international flavour, as we provide a safe haven for birds from as far away as Russia.

With relatively few continental birds in Northern Ireland, the Wetland Bird Survey trends probably reflect local declines

Britain & Ireland, between them, provide winter homes for half of the Europe-wide population of Curlews (about 210,000 out of 420,000), with the Netherlands holding 140,000 birds.  There are also significant flocks in Germany and about 20,000 in France.  These may seem like reasonable numbers but, given that fewer chicks are being raised, the number of adults is declining, two close relatives have been driven to extinction and other curlew species are in trouble, the label of near-threatened seems highly appropriate.

We should be proud of our wintering Curlews in Great Britain, where numbers have stabilised, albeit at a level that is 20% lower than at the turn of the century, but there is no room for complacency in Northern Ireland, where the decline continues.

Update: Curlew was added to the red list of the UK’s Birds of Conservation Concern on 3 December 2015

Other WaderTales blogs about Curlew

• Why are we losing our large waders? takes a look at a review of the common threats faced by the 13 Numeniini species (godwits, curlews and Upland Sandpiper).
• Curlews can’t wait for a treatment plan focuses on the primary drivers of the species’ breeding decline in Great Britain.
• Sheep numbers and Welsh Curlew looks at habitat associations within a large site  in the Welsh uplands; getting the grazing regime right seems to be very important.
• Curlew Moon has at its heart a review of Mary Colwell’s book of the same name but also summarises some of the issues being faced by Curlew in Ireland and the UK.
• Ireland’s Curlew Crisis focuses on the nationwide breeding survey between 2015 and 2017, which revealed a 96% decline in the number of pairs in just 30 years.
• Curlews and foxes in East Anglia suggest that ‘curlew plots’ may be helpful in the fight to conserve the species.
• More Curlew chicks needed has at its core a paper about survival rates of breeding and wintering Curlew. Even in a period of historically low annual adult mortality, breeding numbers have continued to fall.
• The flock now departing reveals fascinating details about Curlew migration with descriptions of four occasions when two tagged birds ended up in the same migratory flock.
• Curlew: after the hunting stopped describes changes to survival rates of Curlew wintering in England & Wales in the period since the species was taken off the shooting list.
• A Norfolk Curlew’s summer follows ‘Bowie’ from April to July. It includes a stoat attack, the brief life of ‘miracle chick’ and autumn migration to Montijo in Portugal, a site threatened by a new airport.
• Will head-starting work for Curlew? There are very few breeding Curlew in southern England. Can head-starting boost numbers while conservationists try to tackle habitat and predator issues?
• Curlew nest survival examines if there are conditions in Breckland (East England) that can deliver the levels of success that will deliver sustainability.

On an autumn high tide, a flock of Curlew roosts on an east coast stubble field (© Graham Catley)

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

@grahamfappleton

A helping hand for Lapwings

This article has been slightly adapted from one written for the Autumn 2015 edition of The Harrier, published by the Suffolk Ornithologists’ Group

Lapwing in flight: Richard Chandler

The space-invader cries of displaying Lapwings are welcome signs of spring across much of Britain’s countryside and losses of this iconic species, especially in lowland England, have been well chronicled.  Conservation organisations, and the RSPB in particular, are successfully supporting breeding numbers on nature reserves but how can their interventions be replicated on working farms, without flooding fields and installing fox-proof electric fences?

On the look-out: Grahame Madge/RSPB impages

Dr Jen Smart of the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science and Professor Jenny  Gill of the University of East Anglia have been studying breeding waders on  RSPB Reserves in the Norfolk Broads for over ten years, but more recently they have extended their wader research into commercially managed grasslands across Norfolk and Suffolk, using funding from Defra.  At the February 2015 ‘Foxycology’ conference, Dr Smart explained how the RSPB is trying to manage the conflict between the conservation of ground-nesting birds and foxes.  The RSPB does not rule out shooting as a protection measure – there’s active fox control in the study site – but prefers to adopt non-lethal solutions to the predation problem.  One answer may be to provide foxes with ‘convenience food’, in the form of mice and voles.  If it’s easier to find mice and voles than wader nests and chicks then perhaps that’s what foxes will do?

Predation is a natural process but rates can be severely skewed by the way that the countryside is managed, especially when the balance of predator and prey is disturbed.  Many predators are opportunists, with species such as foxes, crows, gulls and raptors switching their activities to take advantage of local food availability.  Seasonal abundance of food resources can affect both survival and productivity.  An inexperienced young fox must have a better chance of surviving the winter if he is presented with a generous supply of released pheasants, whilst a vixen, trying to raise a litter of cubs, will find easy pickings in a gull colony.  In the same way, a nature reserve that is full of nesting waders will often attract foxes during the breeding season.

By creating shallow ditches, which add water and insects to grassland habitats, Lapwing productivity is increased: Mike Page/RSPB

The RSPB has become very good at increasing populations of wading birds breeding on their lowland nature reserves but staff are frequently frustrated by the low numbers of young birds that survive through to fledging in some years.  Adding water to the landscape, in the form of pools and ditches, attracts high densities of breeding waders, as these wet features provide insect-rich places to which adults can take their chicks.  The RSPB/UEA research team has found that Lapwing nests are far more successful when birds nest at high densities, presumably because they work together to look out for and drive off potential predators, and they also found that Redshanks benefit from the activities of the more numerous and defensive Lapwings.  Practical actions, such as clearing woodland that abuts wetland or removing single trees in which crows sit to spot the next meal, have been shown to reduce avian predation in the daytime, to such an extent, in fact, that three-quarters of nest-losses are now taking place at night.

A young and vulnerable Lapwing chick: Richard Chandler

Using cameras, the team has shown that 70% of the culprits filmed taking eggs are foxes, with badgers coming a distant second, at 12%.  Wader chicks leave the nest soon after hatching, and RSPB research has shown that chick predation is then largely from foxes at night and raptors in the daytime, but with stoats, weasels and opportunistic birds, such as grey herons, taking smaller numbers.  Overall, by far the biggest threat to productivity is the fox.

One fox (and badger) deterrent that is available on nature reserves is to use well-maintained mains-supplied electric fences to surround fields in which waders nest.  Trials by the RSPB have shown that Lapwing fledging success is significantly improved in fenced areas, increasing from just over 0.2 chicks per pair to 0.8 chicks.  The target level for a sustainable population is 0.6 young per pair so the lower figure is well below par and 0.8 should be providing a surplus of birds that can go on to nest elsewhere.  Fences are not perfect, however; they do not exclude predators such as stoats and weasels, and the increased success of nests means high densities of chicks can be an irresistible resource for opportunistic and adaptable aerial predators trying to feed their own young.  Fencing is also only really effective on a relatively small scale so does not provide the solution to what is a landscape-scale problem.  RSPB research has shown that there is a lot of variability in predation rates, which provides opportunities to try to understand the complex interactions between foxes, mustelids (stoats and weasels), small mammals and waders.

In open grassland, Lapwings can keep an eye out for approaching predators: Richard Chandler

Much of the patchiness of productivity within a site is linked to the amount of grass in fields and along field edges.  Grazing is a key management tool in wet grasslands, with cattle creating the short and varied sward structure that is attractive to a range of breeding waders.  By using ink tracking tunnels, within which mammals leave their footprints, and looking for field-signs of activity, Dr Becky Laidlaw has been able to show that this short grass is of little use to mice and voles.  She discovered that they prefer verge areas, outside the fields, where the grass is at least 20 cm tall and where there is ground-level vegetation cover of more than 80%.  Using data on wader nest success collected over 10 years, she was also able to show that Lapwings nesting in fields close to this small mammal habitat had lower rates of predation. Adding in tall grass strips and patches within a farmland landscape could potentially increase the populations of small mammals, thereby distracting foxes and mustelids, and reducing predation pressure.  Avian predators of wader chicks might appreciate this intervention too!  This work is published as:

The influence of landscape features on nest predation rates of grassland-breeding waders by Rebecca A Laidlaw, Jennifer Smart, Mark A Smart & Jennifer A Gill in Ibis 157:4 Oct 2015

Over the last two years, the RSPB/UEA team has worked with landowners of commercial grasslands across East Anglia, who between them are responsible for a large percentage of remaining breeding wader populations. Building on the work on reserves, the aim was to understand whether habitat suitability and predation processes differ between reserve and wider countryside waders.  To accomplish this, they assessed the extent to which grassland management options within agri-environment schemes support small mammal populations, as well as measuring field wetness, Lapwing densities and nest predation rates.  They also assessed the importance of different nest predators for waders nesting in the wider countryside and within nature reserves.

A weasel leaves its mark: Becky Laidlaw

Becky and her team found similar distributions of small mammals in the wider countryside as had already been found on nature reserves.  Within both, there were higher densities of small mammals within grassland habitats outside of fields, while presence within fields did not vary significantly among fields managed under different grassland agri-environment options.  Encouragingly, densities of Lapwing nesting in fields managed in accordance with the breeding wader option were significantly higher than in fields with no interventions. Lapwings nesting in areas with many other Lapwings and nests that were closer to patches of small mammal habitat were less likely to be predated, but the rate of Lapwing nest predation did not differ between the wider countryside and reserves.  It should be possible, therefore, to create Lapwing hot-spots outside of nature reserves, thereby expanding the reproductive potential of East Anglia.  Unsurprisingly, given the previous findings about the causes of nest-losses on nature reserves, wider-countryside sites where foxes were present experienced both higher overall nest predation and nocturnal nest predation.

Redshank also benefit for management designed to support Lapwings and probably appreciate the shared look-out duties Photo: Richard Chandler

The main findings of this study are that wader nest predation rates and spatial patterns of nest predation on lowland wet grasslands are remarkably similar inside and outside reserves. This should help to directly inform the design and development of lowland wet grassland landscapes, making them capable of attracting and supporting sustainable populations of breeding waders within the constraints of commercial grasslands.  Jen Smart is optimistic; “If we can provide wet fields that look attractive to Lapwings in spring and patches of tall vegetation that hold high numbers of small mammals it ought to be possible to improve nesting success and productivity”.  She and her colleagues are now looking at how a range of different agri-environment options might be used to create such landscapes.  The next phase of the project will be to try out the most promising options, in order to see the scale at which these patches of tall vegetation for small mammals need to be provided if they are to deliver the desired result – more breeding waders.

Update 

The are several other WaderTales blogs that may be of interest to people who like Lapwings:

• How well do Lapwings and Redshanks grow? reports on a Wader Study paper that shows that there is plenty of food available on wet grassland managed for waders.
• Big-foot and the Redshank nest investigates appropriate cattle stocking levels for successful Redshank breeding.
• Can habitat management rescue Lapwing populations? Might the right mix of pools and verges with long grass provide a big enough uplift in nest success rates?
• Mastering Lapwing conservation focuses on two MSc projects that investigated actual and perceived risks of predation in Lapwings.
• Tool-kit for wader conservation provides an overview of the tools that are available to conservationists and site-managers working on wet grasslands.

For a full list of WaderTales blogs visit https://wadertales.wordpress.com/about/

 

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

@grahamfappleton

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Why do some Black-tailed Godwits wear colour-rings?

The birdwatchers at Cley provide daily observations of the colour-ringed Black-tailed Godwits that turn up on the site, revealing some fascinating stories and contributing massively to migration research.

This blog was originally written for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s magazine, Tern.

Flock of Black-tailed Godwits at Cley: Pat Wileman

No two visits to Cley are the same; the birds change with the seasons and even from day to day.  If there are 200 Black-tailed Godwits in front of Daukes hide on Tuesday and only 100 on Thursday does that mean that half have moved on – or did all of the earlier birds leave, to be replaced by a new selection?  The fact that several individuals wear colour-rings enables regular godwit observers, such as David and Pat Wileman and Mark Golley, to help provide some answers.

The highest Cley counts of Black-tailed Godwits now occur in the autumn, when birds can be found feeding or roosting on the scrapes and lagoons, pulling worms from the wet meadows or picking up grain from nearby stubble feeds.  Many colour-ringed birds have only been seen once but others become old favourites, like ‘orange/green – orange/green-flag’.  Until 2015 he spent the late summer weeks at Cley moulting out of his red summer plumage (see series of three pictures below).  As autumn turned to winter, he flew onwards to the Tagus Estuary in Portugal, where he was first ringed in 2007 by José Alves, one of a team investigating migration at the Universities of East Anglia, Iceland and Aveiro (Portugal).

Three pictures of the same bird, moulting out of its breeding finery and into winter plumage. Photographs by Chris Cook, Pat Wileman & Richard Chandler

Another well-watched bird is ‘lime – yellow/black//white’.  She was first caught on the Wash in September 2002 and has spent every March/April at Cley or Stiffkey. She has been seen in Ireland in mid-winter and nests in northern Iceland.  This bird was already an adult when ringed 12 years ago so her exact age is unknown.  The current record for Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits is 25 years but colour-ringing is likely to show that they can live even longer.

The ring on the lower part of the right leg used to be white. This distinctive staining is an extra complication for colour-ring observers at Cley. Photo: Chris Cook

Cley is just one observation point across the whole of the Icelandic Black-tailed Godwit’s range.  Jenny Gill, who leads the godwit research at UEA, is working with colleagues in Iceland, Portugal, France, Spain, Ireland and across the UK to understand migration patterns and their consequences for survival and breeding success.  Every reported set of colour-rings is important, even if the same bird was seen in the same spot yesterday.  It may not be there tomorrow, in which case today’s record has helped to pinpoint the departure date.  Visitors at Cley can send their sightings to David at cbcrecords@talktalk.com , write them in the hide log book or contact Jenny at j.gill@uea.ac.uk

Whilst the vast majority of Cley Black-tailed Godwits are of the Icelandic race, a few birds from the small population of birds that breed in the Ouse and Nene Washes also pass through in the autumn. Later they will join thousands of birds from continental Europe, wintering in Iberia and west Africa.  The Icelandic colour-ringed birds are providing fascinating insights into the migratory movements of that subspecies, the numbers of which have risen at the same time as the numbers of the continental subspecies have declined.  Icelandic birds winter all around western Europe; Cley birds have been seen in France, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, as well as around much of the UK.

Colour-ring sightings have helped to reveal a huge amount about Black-tailed Godwits.  Amongst many other findings:

Rates of population increase were greater on estuaries with low initial numbers, and Black-tailed Godwits on these sites had lower prey-intake rates, lower survival rates and arrived later in Iceland than those on sites with stable populations. The Buffer effect and large-scale population regulation in migratory birds. JA Gill, K Norris, TG Gunnarsson, PW Atkinson & WJ Sutherland. Nature 412, 436-438 (26 July 2001).

We know that birds from the same pair have nothing to do with each other outside the breeding season, even wintering in different countries, but that they need to arrive on territory within a day or two of each other if there is not to be a divorce.  Pair Bonds: Arrival synchrony in migratory shorebirds. TG Gunnarsson, JA Gill, T Sigurbjörnsson & WJ Sutherland.  Nature 431, 646 (7 October 2004). There’s a WaderTales blog about this paper.

We have learnt that spring migration is getting earlier, driven by new recruits getting back to Iceland earlier than older birds.  Why is timing of migration advancing when individuals are not? Jennifer A. Gill, José A. Alves, William J. Sutherland, Graham F. Appleton, Peter M. Potts, Tómas G. Gunnarsson.  Proceedings of The Royal Society B 281 (13 November 2013). There’s a WaderTales blog about this paper.

Want to know more?

This blog tells more stories about individual Black-tailed Godwits and the birdwatchers who study them: Godwits and Godwiteers.

There are many more WaderTales blogs about Black-tailed Godwits. Click here to see what is available. 

Cley is a great place to see godwits at really close quarters, as are a number of other nature reserves around the country.  Reports of colour-ringed birds provide an important element of ongoing migration research.  Please contact Jenny Gill at j.gill@uea.ac.uk and you will receive a life-history of your bird, either from Jenny or from one of her collaborators.

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

@grahamfappleton