Abstract from BTO Research Report No 224:

Gillings, S. & Fuller, R.J.

Winter ecology of Golden Plovers and Lapwings: A review and consideration of extensive survey methods.

Executive summary

Britain supports internationally important numbers of Golden Plovers and Lapwings in winter. The majority of these birds spend the winter on lowland farmland where they are missed by existing monitoring schemes. This report is in two main parts: the first is a literature review and the second is a discussion of survey methods. We start by summarising current knowledge of the population size, trends, distribution and movements of plovers wintering in Britain. Patterns of habitat use and how they are affected by season, region and lunar phase are discussed, particularly with respect to plovers on farmland. We discuss components of agricultural change that may have affected plovers and highlight the need for further research, particularly extensive surveys.

We describe several sources of data on plover numbers and distribution from previous surveys that are available to researchers planning extensive and intensive surveys. We then describe work undertaken by ourselves and BTO volunteers during winters 1996/97 and 1997/98 using different counting techniques to identify suitable methods for an extensive volunteer based survey of wintering plovers. Problems identified include the highly clumped distribution of plover flocks, the high frequency of movements of entire flocks at a local level, and the changing composition of flocks in terms of individuals. The main implication of this work is that surveys of randomly selected grid squares are unlikely to produce meaningful population estimates for Golden Plovers and Lapwings. Suggestions of alternative methods for surveying plovers are made.

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