Another Fantastic Breeding Season for Ground Nesting Birds at Elmley

2019 has ended up as another fantastic breeding season for lapwing, redshank and host of other ground nesting birds at Elmley after record breaking results last year. 336 pairs of lapwing managed to fledge over 429 chicks between April and July, a productivity of 1.2 chicks fledged per brood. An incredible result! The detail below show the full story as recorded by independent surveyors, led by Mr R. Poppe, using the Bolton et al methodology - one count every 3 weeks undertaken five times over the breeding season.

The surveyors systematically cover the whole 3000 acres of wet grazing marsh at Elmley NNR in an effort to identify adult lapwing and their chicks at each stage of development from individual adults to nesting and through chick development to fledging using a peer reviewed and recommended methodology created by Bolton et al. During the survey they also record the number of adult birds for other species such as redshank, skylark and yellow wagtails.

The very mild weather of February and March prompted many birds to pair and breed almost two weeks earlier than usual. This meant the first chick spotted was in the first week of April almost two weeks earlier than the normal, around 16th. This had a knock on effect to predation as large numbers of Mediterranean Gulls were still present on the marsh and Swale. The dry conditions meant rather than the gulls hoovering up worms they developed a taste for wader chicks. Many of the first broods of four chicks, totaling almost 100 chicks were all taken by pairs of Med gulls. Luckily the lapwing showed remarkable tenacity and with time on their side before the marsh dried and grass grew they re-laid and produced fledged chicks from their second broods. This is again a real rarity at Elmley.

To put this year's results in some perspective 2019 is the second best productivity result over the last ten years and means Elmley has again contributed a surplus number of birds to the local lapwing population. The weather plays a critical role but to achieve these results the habitat including water levels, sward height and density, micro-topography etc has to be right. In addition, these ground nesting birds benefit from low densities of key predators including foxes, corvids, stoat and hedgehog (voracious eggs eater which are live trapped and relocated to suitable local habitat).

Bolton et al methodology – Lapwing Survey 2019
Surveyor - Mr R. Poppe and R. Brookes
	Period 1	Period 2	Period 3	Period 4	Period 5
	08-12/04/2019	28/4-03/05/19	19-24/05/19	10-14/06/19	01-02/07/18
Birds	673	590	537	354	27
Birds Alarming/Behaving as if with Chicks	0	66	35	24	3
Birds with chicks	6	192	253	174	0
Chicks	22	276	48	12	0
Chicks Part grown	0	108	23	13	0
Chicks well feathered	0	0	69	11	0
Chicks Fledged	0	0	221	202	6
Birds sitting on eggs	147	31	17	7	0
Elmley NNR Totals	336
Fledged chicks	429
Total productivity	1.27

Other Ground Nesting Breeding Birds

These figures are recorded during the Lapwing survey and indicate breeding adults as total numbers or singing/displaying males. Redshank are clearly a outstanding success too with over 500 adult birds recorded the marshes were literally covered in broods of redshank chicks this Spring. Great to see Skylark and avocet in three figure numbers. An odd note were shovellers as we usually hold at least 20-25 pairs but they seemed to disappear by mid-June we suspect owing to breeding earlier than normal.

	Redshank	Oystercatcher	Yellow Wagtail	Skylark	Ring Plover	Avocet	Shoveller
			male	singing male
8-12 April 2019	440	95	8	53	5	50	92
28/4 - 3 May 2019	474	120	87	103	2	54	51
19-24 May 2019	567	117	54	111	0	94	44
10-14 June 2019	577	164	62	168	0	120	0
1-2 July 2019	19	72	24	68	2	71	0

Thank you to all the team who's hard work and dedication over the winter has set the conditions for a wonderful Spring this year. A huge thank you to Richard Poppe for five years of excellent independent surveying of our wintering and breeding birds, he has contribute a huge amount of data on waders, not least half of the figures for the longest running breeding wader project in the UK.