Blogs

The woodcock breeding season will now be well underway. Male woodcock will be roding all across the country and most females will be incubating. Some females will already have chicks, especially given the relatively mild start to the spring. Normally, by mid-April, we are busy with spring fieldwork but under current coronavirus restrictions, none of our usual work can continue.

Curlew Country, which launches its webcam programme once again this week, has done an amazing job in getting boots on the ground – practical, hands-on working with farmers and land managers – to recover these much-loved birds that have almost disappeared from our countryside.

Nellie III has made a welcome return to the Woodcock Watch map with a series of new transmissions.

Everyone is worried about curlew in Wales – our breeding population has seen a 62 percent decline over the past 25 years.

No wonder they have a day dedicated to them each year. But curlew are in dire straits. They have declined across Scotland by 61% (1995 to 2016), twice the rate in England. This is worrying as Scotland holds around 60% of the UK population or approximately a whopping 15% of the world population of this globally declining species. Something needs to be done to help them.

World Curlew Day is a grassroots initiative, supported by major environmental organisations, to raise awareness of the plight of curlews and to encourage activities to help them. We cannot simply preside over extinction. We must take the opportunity to assess all practical options at our disposal to safeguard the future of our curlews.

If we want to stop the curlew going the way of many other birds, such as the corncrake and the nightjar, we are going to need Defra to allow landowners to resume protecting the curlew’s young on their most important breeding grounds.

Over the past month, thrush surveys have been the primary job here at Auchnerran. Luckily we have been able to continue this study despite the COVID-19 pandemic as we are based on the farm, which is in a remote location, and no travelling is required.

With temperatures warming and the days getting longer, breeding Lapwing will shortly be back in the Avon Valley. We have been a busy team this winter, establishing 2 new breeding wader hotspot sites and monitoring wintering waterfowl and waders. So, before we get into the 2019 season, we thought it would make sense to reflect on 2018.