MERLIN: Work is required to bring lapwings back from the brink
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AT this time of year when spring cereal sowing is about to get into full swing on farmland in the lowlands of Moray my thoughts always turn to lapwings and their changing fortunes over the years on arable farmland in that area.
When I was a young lad in the late 1950s and early 1960s breeding lapwings or peewits as I called them were common on farmland within a few miles of my home town of Elgin in any direction.
They were still fairly common up to the early 1980s but breeding numbers quickly dropped as the effect of the changeover from mixed farming to mainly intensive winter cereal growing in the 1960s and 1970s began to take effect.
This meant that there was no suitable bare ground for the lapwings to make a scrape for their eggs when they returned in the spring because the winter cereal by this time was too dense and tall.
Lapwings like bare ground with short sparse vegetation so that they can easily see the approach of potential predators. The changeover to intensive cereal growing also meant that there was very few grass fields enriched with the dung of sheep and cattle alongside the cereal fields for the adults to lead their chicks to as they grew. Dung-enriched grass fields are a greater source of invertebrate food then cereal fields.
Wet areas in fields particularly in meadows that are an even greater source of food for lapwings were also extensively drained for the planting of cereals.
These days I very seldom see pairs of this iconic bird on farmland in the lowlands of Moray which makes me sad because I believe that these birds could be brought back from the brink if arable farmers could see their way to providing some nesting habitat for them.
A small plot of land left fallow or unsown in a cereal field is an ideal way to do this. This system has been used in England to good effect and should work just as well in the lowlands of Moray as I witnessed during the years 2021 and 2022 at Ardgye Farm near Alves.
An area in a cereal field near the A96 roughly 70x20 metres whether by accident or design had been left unsown and during those years there was a pair of lapwings nesting on this small bare area. I am not sure if they raised any chicks because the nearby A96 is a very busy and dangerous road to park on at that point to scan the plot for chicks but I assumed chicks were reared because I saw the adult birds chasing off crows.
Sadly, the fallow area along with the rest of the field was ploughed and sown with winter cereal last autumn and there is now no nesting place for lapwings in the field.
So if breeding lapwings were attracted to such a small plot the ideal size of fallow plot of one km square as recommended by the RSPB should be even more attractive. The fallow plots are simple and cheap to establish and easily included in the crop rotation.
If farmers are willing to do this I am convinced they can save the lapwing from extinction in the Moray lowlands.
