Lapwing Surveys

With the wader breeding season drawing to a close we are now counting the flocks of fledged Lapwing chicks to record breeding success at the Reserve this year.  We had a very successful season, monitoring 34 Lapwing nests and 5 Redshank nests across our wader meadows.  building on our use of thermal imaging from last year to find and record nests in the spring we were also able to use it to find and track the hatched chicks. 

We recorded 108 hatched chicks from the 34 Lapwing nests recorded, and 15 Redshank chicks, we know there were atleast 2 more redshank nests that we failed to find.  Redhsank nest deep within grass and rush tussocks making them incredibly difficult to find even with the thermal camera

Unfortuantely due to the Coronavirus pandemic we weren't able to ring the wader chicks this year and we have to make a best estimate of chick fledging rates.  The reserve currently has flocks of young lapwing up to 70 strong which would indicate a fledging rate of 2.05 chicks per pair, well over the 1.7 chicks per pair needed for a stable population.