West Angus Waders - by Dave Parish

Bruce, the West Angus Wader Project’s facilitator and life-long wader enthusiast, in his element!

The changing fortunes of west Angus waders – what will the future hold?

The plight of breeding waders in Scotland will be well known to most readers of this blog. Many of you will probably be in the unfortunate position of having witnessed local declines over recent years – perhaps to the point where they are now scarce, or, sadly, absent completely, and perhaps some of you are fighting back and trying hard to save ‘your’ birds. I had the pleasure recently of spending the day with one such passionate wader enthusiast, Bruce Cooper, and seeing the challenges present and the efforts going on to try to overcome them.

Bruce is a long-standing partner in Working for Waders and has followed the fortunes of waders in west Angus for, dare I say, a few decades now, firstly as a trainee gamekeeper (and latterly as an estate manager) and now as specialist land-use consultant and facilitator of the Working for Waders West Angus Wader Project. There are lots of waders in the project area, with curlew, lapwing and oystercatcher prominent, plus snipe and redshank, but after talking to Bruce you realise that what is present now is but the tip of the wader iceberg compared to years past.

Bruce’s project encompasses a huge area of many tens of square kilometres, with many farms and several shooting interests involved, plus other members of the wider community, and he heads a small team of enthusiasts who help with local predator control and monitoring of wader numbers. We met one of the farmers contributing to the project on our travels who was delighted to hear that he had four broods of lapwing – at least 10 chicks – in just one of his fields. This gentleman’s affection for the birds was clear and manifest in practical ways, best illustrated in a field where he had delayed operations to allow the four pairs of lapwing there the opportunity to fledge their young.

An innocuous looking field, but there were at least 10 lapwing chicks from four broods here, being well looked after by the farmer.

Bruce has also started to speak in local schools about waders and the issues they face, in the knowledge that many of the students will likely end up living and working on the land and so could have a direct impact on local wader numbers.

This is crucial if waders are to remain in these areas as some of the threats they face were clearly evident as we visited different parts of the project area. In one patch, we drove through some pastures to stop and view one particular hill face. The habitat has drastically changed over a 20 year period and was probably supporting more sheep and ravens than it had in years gone by, both of which were likely contributing to local declines in wader numbers.

Bruce said “This hillside used to support about a dozen curlew pairs and we’re now down to about five or six. How much longer before there’s none left?”

And there are big threats on the horizon too. Some of the sporting interests have left the area, with large parts also now being earmarked for tree planting – continuing an ongoing trend. Predator management has ceased in some areas with declines in breeding waders already noted, in the next few years trees are likely to be planted across large areas with the potential to displace many pairs that remain. What once was home to well over 150 pairs of waders – including more than 50 pairs of curlew – may well be devoid of these birds soon.

Thanks to Bruce and his team there is still much to be hopeful about. As we travelled round we saw well over a dozen displaying curlew in some small hotspots, and lots of lapwing chicks. At one farm we stopped to try and count the peewits and log any chicks present. Whilst we tried to clarify the situation for the half dozen or so pairs present, we noticed a female land on the road ahead of us and disappear into the verge. On closer inspection we discovered a brood of three chicks, no more than a week old, stuck in the bottom of a wet roadside ditch. Thankfully, they couldn’t have been there too long as they quickly ran off when we transferred them to the pasture where the pair seemed to be waiting for them, and when we passed again shortly after, they had moved off down the field. Our good deed for the day!

One of three very lucky lapwing chicks rescued from a ditch.

The West Angus Wader Project has huge potential to illustrate some of the problems our farmland waders face, but more importantly how they can be saved, along with a wealth of other biodiversity. We didn’t just see an impressive diversity and abundance of waders, but also buzzards, red kites, sparrowhawk, black and red grouse, whinchat, twite and an abundance of hares and deer. If we can keep this project going, the combination of Bruce’s intimate knowledge of the area and relationships with so many stakeholders, and the passion of all the enthusiasts involved, would be a winning formula that others could aspire to, with our breeding waders the ultimate winners. The project currently runs on a shoestring and relies heavily on volunteers and the goodwill of others, but funds are running dry. The next couple of years will be crucial in determining the future of this amazing project.