The Yellow Wagtail was a once familiar visitor to these wetland meadows and pastures and was once widespread throughout England and Wales. However, as with many other bird species in the UK, the Yellow Wagtail population has plummeted.
Since 1970, the Yellow Wagtail has declined by 70% in farmland habitats and 97% in wetland habitats. It is now on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern and a priority species on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. What happened and can we get them back? We believe the Yellow Wagtail has the potential to respond strongly if we can “get management right”.
Between the Earth Trust, Church Farm Partnership, and a couple of other owners, we have four miles of one bank of River Thames, much of the riparian meadows (adjacent to grasslands, arable and woodland/scrub) and the Earth Trust’s newly created River of Life wetlands. This presents a rare opportunity for a landscape scale conservation project with defined goals.
We have started to collect baseline data and we have engaged with many people through public talks and the very successful launch in September. The project is in it’s beginning phases with PhD student Sophie Cunnington at the helm.
Sophie has worked with Robin for the last few years to collect a lot of invertebrate data across the site. This will provide the abundance data of the flies that make up the yellow wagtail’s diet. It is hoped that by monitoring the food source populations, a better understanding can be obtained on what makes perfect yellow wagtail habitat. Management practises can then be experimented with to work out what the most effective methods are for increasing yellow wagtail populations.
Between the Earth Trust, Church Farm Partnership, and a couple of other owners, we have four miles of one bank of River Thames, much of the riparian meadows (adjacent to grasslands, arable and woodland/scrub) and the Earth Trust’s newly created River of Life wetlands. This presents a rare opportunity for a landscape scale conservation project with defined goals.
Like flood plain hay meadows, a great many wet pastures have been drained, levelled, ploughed, reseeded fertilised and topped to keep a uniform sward rather than a mosaic of tall and short, wet and dry, rich and poor, grassy and herby, open ground and dense cover with good nesting sites for birds.
Livestock and their management have also changed, with more and often heavier stock, often being grazed intensively for relatively short periods. Most livestock are treated prophylactically against intestinal nematode worms and we know that this makes their dung toxic to the larvae of many dung beetles.
There is very little information on the effect of veterinary treatments, on most other soil-living invertebrates, which are probably the source of many of the insects that make up the Yellow Wagtail’s diet.
Yellow Wagtails will return as a breeding species
Increasing numbers of other birds
An explosion of dung beetles
Clouds of midges
Healthy, contented cattle needing minimal veterinary treatment
Happy graziers with thriving businesses
Vibrant, conservation-priority focused research programme
Wide adoption of our aims and methods by other farmers
