| WETLAND - TRACKING WADERS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are grateful to our students Elizabeth Ogilvie and Max Wright for monitoring waders and downloading lapwing data at GWSDF under testing circumstances in 2020, and to Lucy Capstick, Pete Potts and Andy Page for assistance with tagging. We thank EU LIFE+ for part-funding the tags used in the Avon Valley and Hampshire Ornithological Society for funding curlew tags deployed in the New Forest. We are grateful to everyone who donated to our wader tracking appeal.
Wandering waders – using tracking technology Wetland ecologist Lizzie Grayshon deploying a base station in the Avon Valley and looking for tagged lapwings. © GWCT
Waders are in serious decline throughout most of Europe owing to low breeding success. Land use change and increasing rates of predation are important drivers in Britain and Ireland, and we have conducted research in the uplands and lowlands demonstrating how these factors can be effectively addressed. Tracking of individuals helps us complete the picture of species’ requirements and assess the scale of management needed across the landscape for sustainable populations. This is illustrated by our ongoing work on connections between breeding and wintering sites of lapwing and breeding season habitat use by curlew.
Case study 1: Lapwing migration
Figure 1 Movements of an adult male lapwing, tagged in the Avon Valley, between May 2019 and February 2020 This bird bred on arable fields inside our study area (1), left on 29 May but remained on wet grassland in the Avon Valley until 16 June. It then flew 30km to near Stockbridge (2) until 16 October, when it was recorded at another LIFE Waders for Real hotspot site in the Avon Valley (3). There it used the wet grassland, adjacent arable land and visited outdoor pig fields (3). After 10 days, it moved to Southampton Water via Christchurch Harbour, utilising pasture at Dibden and adjacent coastal sites (4). It left the estuary 26 January 2020 for an arable area near Warminster (5), moving on 6 February to another arable area (6), moving back towards the Avon Valley a couple of weeks later and returning to the same arable field to breed where it was tagged (7). This bird used wet grassland, arable farmland and coastal designated areas after leaving its breeding site (orange cross), providing the first evidence for a link between breeding sites in the Avon Valley and designated coastal sites for wintering and the need to consider habitats used during both periods for effective wader conservation. Map data copyrighted ESRI 2021
70 | GAME & WILDLIFE REVIEW 2020
Information from bird ringing suggests that lapwings breeding in northern England and Scotland tend to move south and west to winter in Ireland, whereas lapwings breeding in southern England are more likely to winter in France and Iberia. Movements are thought to be linked to colder weather, though evidence for this is limited. Lapwings face different pressures away from the breeding grounds and depending on where they spend the winter, so it is important that we gain a better understanding of the resources that they require when moving between breeding and wintering grounds, the pressures at wintering sites and where conservation efforts could be improved.
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