A paper is planned and the more detailed survey report will shortly be available. We are extremely grateful to all the volunteers, RSPB and Natural England staff who contributed to the survey, as well as landowners for allowing access.

Why survey upland farmland waders?

The purpose of this survey was to estimate the population size of waders and other important bird species supported by ‘In-bye’ farmland. More crucially, this will provide a baseline against which to measure population changes and the effect of agri-environment scheme management.

What was required?

This survey involved volunteers visiting up to 1,000 selected 2-km squares (tetrads) throughout England, located in upland areas. Each tetrad contained at least 80 hectares of ‘In-bye’ land.

The survey involved two morning visits between 1st April and 15th July 2016. During the two visits, volunteers needed to study, by entering or viewing from outside, as many of the ‘In-bye’ fields as possible, and record details of habitat and farm management/activities, as well as counting breeding birds.

The primary focus was to record the number of pairs of breeding waders, including Curlew, Lapwing, Oystercatcher, Redshank and Snipe.  However, a number of other important upland breeding species were also to be recorded.

Results

The survey was targeted at better understanding the breeding wader population on upland farmland in England, known as ‘in-bye’. As highlighted recently, many wader species, including the focal Curlew, Lapwing, Redshank and Snipe, are in decline and conservation action is urgently required to attempt to halt or reverse the situation.

The in-bye habitat has been little studied, but there are indications that it supports substantial numbers of breeding waders. In addition, much of the farmed land is under agri-environment management, so there is considerable potential for improving the prospects for breeding waders.

In 2016, a total of 522 tetrads out of 2837 tetrads, each containing more than 80 hectares of in-bye habitat, were surveyed.

Some impressive counts of breeding pairs were recorded, with population estimates representing over 50% of the national population for Curlew, Lapwing and Snipe. 

Apart from Oystercatcher, in-bye wader numbers have fallen since the 1980s. However, there is evidence that conservation action via agri-environment schemes may be having positive effects, particularly through management aimed at providing feeding and nesting habitat and also through the restoration of grassland.

Table 1: Summary of total adults and breeding pairs counted in 2016 from 522 tetrads

Table 2: Population estimates for adults and breeding pairs in all in-bye habitat in England (2837 tetrads)

Further information

Contact greg.conway@bto.org if you wish to retrieve any data submitted to this survey.