Aurora borealis: Breeding waders and the eternal optimist

June 14, 2005

Breeding waders and the eternal optimist

Aurora header.jpg

Of course, the last entry proved to be a one-off, and the weather returned to... guess what? Yep, another spell of northerlies. No wonder there are still white-winged gulls mooching around the fish factories. Yesterday against all the odds turned out summery though, so I finally got round to doing the breeding wader surveys I'd promised FWAG I'd do for them some weeks ago.

It's interesting stuff, the project behind these surveys. We all 'know' that keeping cows on the land is 'better' for biodiversity than stocking with sheep for example. But there's no work or body of evidence to actually prove this. The local branch of FWAG are running a project to encourage crofters to keep cows on their land, and over the next few years will be measuring any changes in the biodiversity of the participating land. It all starts this year, hence the wader surveys to establish a starting point.

A really mixed bag yesterday evening; some land absolutely heaving with breeding waders (Snipe, Oystercatcher, Curlew and Redshank); and other parks barren and void of any sign of waders, let alone territorial or feeding birds. To draw a simplistic (but stark) conclusion, it was the land which had had cows on it for some time which had the breeding birds; the clearly ex-sheep parks were the poor ones for waders. It'll be interesting to see in a few years time after they've been stocked with cows whether the waders start to adopt them for breeding purposes.

JL joined me while we tramped around looking for signs of breeding waders; it's always in the back of my mind when doing stuff like this that were there any justice in the world, this is the time you'll stumble across that mega bird, something like a Caspian Plover for example. Of course, it wasn't to be. Encouraging though were a couple of admittedly miniscule colonies of Arctic Terns, with birds bringing in fish; not, on closer inspection, sand-eels; instead small sillicks (coley?). I hope the terns can adapt to this new feeding regime and raise some young this year. We'll see.

Follow the Weather Starling for a forecast, or see Shetland live on the NAFC webcam…