Moray’s largely arable lowland farmland attracts pair of lapwings
While watching a farmer ploughing a field of barley stubble in the Laich of Moray last week using a seven furrow reversible plough and taking no time at all to complete the task I pondered how long it would have taken a man with a pair of horses to plough the same field back in the days of the horse.
On scanning the ploughed area through my binoculars I noted a pair of lapwings perched on the furrows in a wetter part of field. I was delighted to see them because they have become a rare breeding bird in the largely arable farmland of lowland Moray but at the same time I felt sad that this pair will probably fail to breed successfully due to agricultural operations later in the year.
• Sign up for our free newsletters
I always feel this sense of sadness and loss during the spring when I tour the Laich of Moray and note that breeding lapwings continue to be absent from areas where they were common when I was young.
I had been hoping that the change back to spring-sown cereals from autumn-sown ones in recent years might have seen the return of the lapwing to some of its former haunts but this has not happened. It was the changeover from spring sown cereals to autumn sown ones that was largely responsible for the decline of breeding lapwings on arable farmland.
Lapwings like to make their nest scrapes in the soil of bare or sparsely vegetated ground such as spring sown cereal so that they can see predators coming from a long way away. The crop in autumn-sown cereal fields is too high for the birds to feel safe to nest in by the time the breeding season comes round in spring.
Intensive cereal growing, whether it is spring sown or autumn sown, is not good for lapwing breeding in general because it is probably low in the invertebrate food that the lapwing chicks require. Studies conducted on mixed farmland have shown that chicks hatched from nests in cereal crops as they grow older are often led by their parents to nearby areas of grassland where invertebrates like worms and snails are more plentiful.
Agricultural operations during the growing of cereals like the rolling of the young crop to encourage tillering must also have been responsible for the loss of many nests of eggs over the years
One of the thoughts going through my head as I watched the farmer ploughing with his seven furrow reversible plough was whether or not he had noticed the pair of lapwings in the field he was ploughing.
When my father worked on farms during the days of the horse and later during the 1950s with tractors, he said he used to move lapwing eggs out of the way of his harrows or rollers and replace them by making a new scrape after he had passed over where the nests were. I doubt if the present day farm workers, ensconced as they are in heated cabs high above the ground, even notice birds like nesting lapwings.
It would be great if they did notice and can ensure that the nests successfully produce young where this iconic farmland bird still attempts to breed.
