Wintering Golden Plovers and Lapwings

In winter Britain is host to 250,000 Golden Plovers and probably 1.5 million Lapwings but we need to know so much more about them.

Unlike most wader species, most of these birds can be found on farmland during the winter months. Historically both species have preferred to feed on pastures. However, since the 1970s, changes in farm management have meant that many pastures have been ploughed and converted to arable farmland. The remaining pastures have also been subjected to ‘improvements’ such as reseeding, drainage and fertiliser addition. All these changes have decreased the quantity of food available to plovers feeding on pastures in winter. At the same time we've seen dramatic changes in the abundance and distribution of plovers.

The figure (right) shows smoothed trends in numbers of Golden Plovers (square symbols) and Lapwings (circles) on coastal and inland Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) core count sites. Though an unknown fraction of the wintering populations of these species winter on the coast, these counts provide the only long-term information on trends for a part of the population. Plovers like all waders have been counted systematically since the early 1970s on all estuaries and over this period they show a big decline in 70s and 80s followed by a recovery and continued increase. Inland wetlands were counted systematically for waders since the early 1990s. Whilst they have not been covered for so long, and comprise a mixture of types of sites, at least for Golden Plover the coastal and inland trends show similar patterns.

These national indices hide a lot of regional variation and we find that the increases are largely driven by marked increases in the numbers of both species wintering on the East coast of England. What might be the causes of these trends? At present this is unclear. There could be real population increases, but this seems unlikely for a couple of reasons. Firstly we know that both species, and particularly Lapwings, are declining in many countries where these birds breed. Secondly it seems unlikely that two species that breed in such different countries and different habitats should show so closely matched trends. Perhaps more likely is that there is some factor acting on the wintering grounds where the two species mix. Changes in habitat quality and climate change are probably the most likely.

What do we know about distribution patterns? The two maps below are smoothed relative abundance maps for Golden Plover from the Winter Atlas of the early 1980s (Lack 1986) and from the Winter Farmland Bird Survey (WFBS) of the late 1990s/early 2000s. There are several striking differences. Firstly the extent and centre of the distribution is more easterly biased in the later survey. Also the colour is paler. This does not necessarily indicate fewer birds overall, it means that the birds were more clumped. Bear in mind that the period covered by the Winter Atlas included some particularly cold winters whereas WFBS spanned a period of mild winters, it is possible that part of the difference in distribution and dispersion is due to prevalent weather conditions.

Left map is based on maximum counts in each 10-km square from the Winter Atlas. Right map is based on casual records, winter walks and counts in 1-km squares all from WFBS. Upland areas are blanked out in white. Smoothing by inverse distance weighting – darker colours indicate higher relative abundance.

These trends and maps are to be published in the following paper submitted to Bird Study Gillings, S., Austin, G.E., Fuller, R.J. & Sutherland, W.J. (submitted) Distribution shifts in wintering Golden Plovers Pluvialis apricaria and Lapwings Vanellus vanellus in Britain. Bird Study.

The effects of these changes on plover distribution and usage of habitats are poorly known.

To try to fill some of these gaps the BTO's work on farmland birds includes studies of wintering Golden Plovers and Lapwings.

• See preliminary results - click here
  Things that go pee-wit in the night
  Click here to find out what plovers get up to when the rest of us are safely tucked up in bed.
• October 2003 International Golden Plover Survey
  Click here to see the results of this first attempt to coordinate counting of Golden Plovers in Britain with elsewhere in North-west Europe.
• Towards European monitoring of Golden Plovers
  Click here (pdf 1.24 MB) to find out about initiatives elsewhere in Europe, and proposals to undertake a coordinated count of Golden Plovers across Europe in October 2008.