Great Success for Northumberland’s Nesting Shorebirds

In a summer which has been extremely challenging for coastal wildlife, we are delighted to say that nesting shorebirds had a successful breeding season on the Northumberland Coast! This year, with the help of our amazing ringed plover surveyors and chick watch volunteers from Coast Care, we were protecting ringed plover and oystercatcher nests all along the coast.

A spell of unseasonal warm weather back in March kickstarted the nesting season extremely early, with several pairs of ringed plovers observed to be holding territory, and one pair at Embleton scraping and even mating! The nesting season typically begins around mid April, as nesting any earlier leaves their small eggs vulnerable to any late cold snaps of weather. We created our first nest protection area of the year at Embleton on 24th March, three weeks earlier than planned due to the behaviour of the birds. Thankfully, no nest was observed by this pair until early May, which meant the birds didn’t waste any energy producing eggs which would have inevitably failed as the weather turned very cold again in April.

For the past two years, nesting ringed plovers have been thoroughly monitored along the Northumberland coastline, and it has been incredibly valuable to discover exactly where the birds are nesting, with some previously unknown sites becoming apparent this year. Throughout April and May, ringed plovers were nesting all along the coast and by the end of May, we were hoping that some of the early nest attempts would have been successful and chicks would have fledged. However all of those nests failed due to adverse weather conditions, predation and human and dog disturbance.

Nesting shorebirds face a number of challenges throughout the breeding season, and for this reason their population is declining. Yet, despite their losses earlier in the season, the birds showed incredible tenacity and most pairs re-laid to have second or third nesting attempts. By the end of August, 13 ringed plover chicks and 1 oystercatcher chick fledged successfully from our nest protection sites, an incredible achievement for the birds and a huge improvement from only 4 fledglings last year.

An oystercatcher chick and its mother feeding at Embleton

It takes a big team effort to help ringed plovers breed successfully on the beaches, and with the Northumberland Coast being busier than ever, it is unlikely that they could have done it without intervention to create protected areas around their nests. We would like to say a big thank you to the volunteers from Coast Care who have dedicated their time to help us throughout the nesting season, from surveying their local beaches for signs of nesting to braving the elements to monitor the progress of the chicks. The support that local residents and visitors have shown for the nesting birds has been incredible; ringed plovers would not have had the success they did without beach users giving them space to raise their young.

Ringed plover mother incubating her 4 chicks at Beadnell – all of which went on to fledge successfully!

Figures from our partners at the National Trust and Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve show that there has been an almost 50% increase in the number of ringed plovers fledging from the Northumberland Coast this year compared to 2021. Adding to this, we have seen good numbers of juveniles on the coast, suggesting that this species has had a successful year all round.

Great work plovers! We can’t wait to do it all again next year!