David Jarrett

Articles and blogposts about upland land management, ground-nesting birds and wider ecology and conservation questions here: davidjarrett.info/writing

Can remote sound recorders help with surveys of breeding waders? Blog: wadertales.wordpress.com/2024/12/04/cou… Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ib… #ornithology #waders #shorebirds

Paper just out in @IBIS_journal - data from acoustic recorders and an AI classifier can be better than transect survey data at predicting relative densities of Curlew and Oystercatcher (but not Golden Plover or Lapwing) across an upland study site.

"It’s likely that public opinion is quietly, calmly against the idea of a National Park in Galloway – but it’ll be interesting to watch the debate unfold if the current battleline of “retired people vs furious farmers” is allowed to deepen & heat up" gallowayfarm.blog/2024/07/30/nat…

Sandpipers, plovers, geology and a long-lost football pitch at a former opencast mine site in East Ayrshire: @wildforest_matt davidjarrett.info/post/the-spire…

Reducing predation is crucial for Curlew recovery. Learning how nest survival and predator identity varies between areas is important for getting interventions right. The images show a stoat predating a Curlew nest monitored this season by @_BTO for the CST project

Flat gravel roofs and proximity to grass sports pitches result in high reproductive success for Oystercatchers - but in this case is the 3G pitch an ecological trap? @ForWaders nature.com/articles/s4159…

Surely the big question here is whether the adults will be able to find enough food to successfully raise young on an artificial pitch - are there grass pitches nearby? bbc.co.uk/news/articles/….

Check this out - an excellent #WorkingforWaders blog from David summarising the many issues facing waders in Scotland today. @ScotGamekeepers @CurlewAction

@ecoacou_ollie The example in the video is a hot mess - he could equally say "Mink Control is not conservation: no Mink has ever benefitted from being killed." Conservation is about preserving habitats, populations, ecosystems etc., not benefitting specific individuals.

This is of course complete bullshit. Ringing data is used in adaptive management, and will ne increasingly so with new tracking tech.

Tipping Points: is it time for new approach to wader conservation? “We need to communicate honestly and openly about the scale of the challenges and what the realistic endpoints might be” - Guest blog by @DavidJarrett4 workingforwaders.com/blog/2024/3/22…

@DeeWardRottal Thanks Dee, and agree completely!

Another good blog on the challenges & nuanced debate required around protecting in particular ground nesting birds. We need to put aside our differences if we are going to solve this dilemma. I would like to see private & NGO working together to agreed priorities in an area.

@WildlifeBlog @DeeWardRottal Thanks Alan, for me the challenge is to hold on to some fraction of what we've got in the uplands - attempting to manage for waders in the lowlands would likely require more intensive predator m'ment than in the uplands because so much more food in the landscape for generalists.

@DeeWardRottal An interesting persepective from an independent field worker. The dilemma is worth progressing, but also worth progressing is how to get lapwing and curlews back to lowland farms where they used to be. Intensive agriculture seems the problem there rather than predation.

At the recent @CurlewAction conference there was much consensus about the importance of communicating openly about predation, so here's a blog post discussing Badgers and ground-nesting birds: davidjarrett.info/post/the-badge…

@IBIS_journal @AksuLehikoinen @SWillis_Durham The paper is free to access at Ibis at that link - the peer review and editorial process was excellent and improved the original draft enormously (thanks!). 6/6 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

@IBIS_journal @AksuLehikoinen @SWillis_Durham Factors which influenced study design included vegetation structure (which determines whether broods are countable), re-laying rates, whether the target species exhibits diagnostic behaviour at the nest and chick stages, and the availability of skilled fieldworkers. 5/6

@IBIS_journal @AksuLehikoinen @SWillis_Durham We categorised studies based on the metric they produced: i) "Hatching Success" - the % of nests that hatch; ii) "Fledging Success" - the % of pairs that fledge any number of young; & iii) Young Fledged per Pair - the total number of young fledging. 4/6

@IBIS_journal @AksuLehikoinen @SWillis_Durham There is a need for wader productivity monitoring at scale, so to provide a resource to funders, researchers and fieldworkers who may wish to develop schemes we reviewed and summarised methods used in published studies that monitored wader breeding productivity in Europe. 3/6

This paper entitled "Monitoring Wader Breeding Productivity" where we reviewed methods used to monitor productivity was recently published (early view) at @IBIS_journal 1/6 @AksuLehikoinen @SWillis_Durham twitter.com/IBIS_journal/s…

@IBIS_journal @AksuLehikoinen @SWillis_Durham Across Europe, wader populations are crashing, associated with low breeding productivity caused by predation, and agricultural activities destroying nests or killing chicks. Most national bird monitoring schemes are only able to monitor presence, and not productivity. 2/6