New Year - Big Plans!

A curlew chick from 2022 - we hope there will be plenty more of these in 2023!

Looking ahead into a new year, this has been a very busy time for Working for Waders. Various project partners were involved in meetings right through the Christmas break to ensure that all our plans are in place for the spring, and it won’t be long until the first birds return to their territories in the hope of producing eggs and chicks. In the South of Scotland, some lapwing pairs will be moving back in the next five or six weeks!

2023 looks like being the busiest year yet for Working for Waders. We’ve laid out an ambitious program of work to take things forward and develop the efforts we’ve made in previous years. Our Nest Camera Project will return in the spring, and we’re looking forward to working with a wide range of participants from across Scotland - from Galloway to Shetland. In 2021, this project shed important new light on badger predation - in 2022, we were surprised by how livestock interference led to a number of nest failures. It will be interesting to see where this work takes us next!

We’re also planning to support a number of farm clusters across the country, helping a range of land managers to work together for wading birds. This kind of work has been really productive in the past, and some excellent groups have emerged over the last few years. We’re keen to explore farm clusters in more detail, backing the farmers and gamekeepers who can make a difference and unlocking collaborative potential for those who are seeking to do more.

At the same time, we’ll also be consolidating some of the data-gathering work which began earlier in the project. Our farm wader calendar has been developed over several seasons to gather information on wader breeding success, and this is becoming a really useful tool to help us assess opportunities and challenges in the wader reproduction process.

Alongside a number of other workstreams and priority areas, we’ll also be pushing for the better protection of waders at all levels, from the farmer’s field to the government lobby. Much more will follow on this blog over the coming weeks - there’s plenty of work to do…

As always, we’re interested to hear from people involved in wader conservation across Scotland.