Lapwing Recovery Project, South West Scotland, 2006-2009

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Description

Breeding lapwing data collected as part of the lapwing recovery project. The aim of the project was to determine the effectiveness of agri-environment schemes.

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The breeding status was derived from lapwing behaviour (adults behaving like they have young or lapwing flocks present), time of survey visit, and whether there were any young recorded. On some visits breeding birds and a non breeding flock were both present on the same filed, these are recorded separately for accurate breeding status.

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The sites were surveyed on a field by field basis. Transforming this site based data to be grid reference based means that some grid squares may hold more than one field, that were originally surveyed separately. This means that there may be a few records that have the same grid reference, and were recorded on the same day, these are not duplicates.

<br /><br />

Lapwings have suffered significant declines, primarily because of changes in farming practices, and are now red listed as a species of high conservation concern everywhere in

the UK.

Geographic Description

South and West of Scotland. Ranging from Dunbar in East Lothian, to Crawford in South Lanarkshire. In addition, Penicuik in West Lothian to Tweeddale in the Borders.

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The resolution is 100m for most of the data, but a few records are only available at 2km, 5km or at 10km resolution. The grid references refer to centroids of fields (the average field size is 7.6 hectares).

Data quality

These data have been gathered by trained field-workers and the data are of a high quality. The data have been mapped and checked for sensitivities and geographical errors.

Methods

Five visits were made to each site during the breeding season at 3-4 weeks intervals, starting in March, although there are some exceptions as surveys weren't conducted in bad weather conditions. Data was collected on number of adults, chicks (newly hatched, partly grown, well grown and fledged).

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In order to verify records and validate the dataset, the data have been mapped and thoroughly checked. The dataset recorders were RSPB staff and volunteers.

Citation

Data reproduced with the permission of RSPB

Rights

CC-BY

Digitised records