EPISODE 15 THE SCIENCE OF MIGRATION

Stephen and Kate are joined by Head of Conservation Science Jen Smart to chat about migration. On a steamy day at RSPB Scotland's Loch Leven Nature Reserve the team talk about why birds migrate and some of the mind boggling distances covered. We also delve into Jen's obsession with waders. Stephen shares his recordings of corncrakes in the Hebrides. Kate has been admiring gannets.

SHOW NOTES
RSPB information on Avian Influenza
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you-can-help-birds/disease-and-garden-wildlife/avian-influenza-updates/
CITY NATURE CHALLENGE
https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/scotland/posts/city-nature-challenge-2022---the-results-are-in
Curlew Video at Insh Marshes
https://youtu.be/w-5LyNSzuMI

Transcript

Intro  0:22 
This is Nature News from RSPB Scotland.

Stephen Magee  0:44 
Hello, and welcome to Nature News from RSPB Scotland. I'm Stephen Magee

Kate Kirkwood  0:50 
 and I'm Kate Kirkwood

Stephen Magee  0:51 
and we are at Loch Leven, the steamy, tropical Loch Leven. It is humid. You know, I know I said this before, but I'm gonna say again on the podcast. It's awfy close.

Kate Kirkwood  1:01 
It is a bit close

Stephen Magee  1:02 
And we are joined by Jen Smart. Hello, Jen.

Jen Smart  1:06 
Good afternoon. Yeah.

Stephen Magee  1:07 
Introduce yourself.

Jen Smart  1:09 
Yeah, I'm Jen Smart. I'm the Head of Conservation Science for Scotland and Northern Ireland for the RSPB. So I manage a big team of scientists who are all out doing really exciting science things, figuring out conservation issues for species, we're worried about

Stephen Magee  1:22 
You're head of complicated stuff, right? That's what we'll call it. Okay. So we are here we are going to have a good chat to Jen about various things, I think we're gonna talk a lot about migration, because of the time of year and a little bit later on about waders. But as ever, we are going to start with our nature news. I will go first. As you will discover later on in the podcast, I have been very lucky the last couple of weeks have been some amazing places and seen some amazing things, heard some amazing things. But actually my bit of nature news is very domestic, which is I have been really enjoying watching the pair of blue tits that have nested in the nest box on the front of my house, who are just gradually looking more and more totally knackered. And like remembering when my kids were little and kind of like feeling solidarity with the blue tits. So that's what I'm doing. What about you?

Kate Kirkwood  2:12 
I had a nice trip out to the coast at the weekend out onto the east coast and went along the beach and was able to watch gannets feeding the first ones I've seen for a wee while because I've not been out to the coast for a while. So that was definitely a kind of real kind of Yep, really nice kind of sign of summer.

Stephen Magee  2:28 
I never get bored with seeing the with the fold themselves up before they go in the water. It's unbelievable right at the last minute.

Kate Kirkwood  2:34 
Those darts they just see them kind of just hovering about you see a swift turn of direction and then they just fold themselves up into straight into the water

Stephen Magee  2:41 
Beautiful, beautiful. What about yourself, Jen?

Jen Smart  2:43 
Well, I think mine is I had a lovely wander round Cupar on Saturday doing an urban gull survey which was great. So this is all part of the big seabird census that has been going on for the last seven years and they're just in a bit of a mop up this summer trying to get a good count of herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls in urban places. So I was given a couple squares round Cupar, and that was really nice.

Stephen Magee  3:03 
Much maligned birds, urban gulls, right, but actually, I don't know how you feel about it, but I love having gulls cutting about you know, it's a little bit of wildness in the town.

Jen Smart  3:13 
Yes. Yeah, I'm exactly. I'm exactly the same, but I'm sure quite a lot of people in the town don't feel like that when, you know, when the pooing on the cars and the windows and such like but it was really nice. And I was really surprised to see oystercatchers nesting on roofs in the middle of residential areas. I expected them on industrial sites but not not on people's houses and I was like I want oystercatchers on my roof.

Kate Kirkwood  3:34 
Noisy neighbours though!

Stephen Magee  3:36 
Noisy but exciting. Now, it's not just our nature news, as ever, it's also what's going on the wider world of nature. I'm going to start with something ,which unfortunately we have talked about before on the podcast, we're talking about it again, and it is quite sad and distressing and that is Avian Influenza. I'm sure people will remember last year, well in the winter when we had a major outbreak, particularly barnacle geese but in other wildfowl, huge impact in the southwest of Scotland and the populations there and everybody was kind of holding their breath to see what would happen, like once the geese left and our summer migrants come in and unfortunately particularly around the north coast and in Shetland seeing a lot of skuas, different species of skuas, bonxies, Arctic skuas, eider ducks, other wildfowl but also like a quite a range of species affected by Avian Influenza. It's just really sad.

Jen Smart  4:36 
Yeah, it's really sad isn't it? And then the news this week that it's gone into the gannets, so there's gannets being affected by it as well now. So, so yeah, it's it's really sad. It's really unusual for us to have it in the summer, it usually feels like a sort of, almost like a winter thing, a bit like us having flu and stuff in winter, it almost feels like that. But for some reason we've got it during the breeding season as well this year. So it's really sad.

Stephen Magee  4:55 
And the footage on Twitter in particular, it's hard to look at isn't it?

Kate Kirkwood  4:58 
It's really distressing and I think as well, it's distressing for members of the birding community and sort of wildlife and conservation because there's very little as an individual you can do about it. Obviously, there's biosecurity measures if you do see large numbers of birds that are found dead or in distress or individuals are particularly wildfowl. Obviously contacting the right people like Defra we'll link up to the show notes on information on what to do if you find that, but it's a bit you feel a bit powerless when you see it. To be honest.

Stephen Magee  5:29 
I think that is the hard bit. But just to emphasise for people, as was always said before, you know, the key thing is don't touch sick or dead birds. And be reassured. There are lots of people looking at this, and trying to think about whether there is anything we can do. But even if there aren't things we can do about Avian Influenza, there are things we can do to take the other pressures off for the species that mean that their chances of getting through challenges like Avian Influenza are better. So even if we can't do stuff necessarily about AI, there's still lots of stuff that we can do to help our seabirds. And you know, that's something we'll talk about another time. Right. Cheerier nature news!

Kate Kirkwood  6:13 
Definitely, much cheerier nature news. So some of you might remember back at the end of April, beginning of May, you might have taken part in the City Nature Challenge, which we were talking about before. So that was wildlife recording across cities across the world, but predominantly, in Scotland, across the central belt. So we had some fantastic results. So globally, there were 47 countries taking place. And in the UK, we came 10th and 12th. With Glasgow and Edinburgh, across the 14 cities taking place,

Stephen Magee  6:41 
What in terms of the number of records returned?

Kate Kirkwood  6:42 
Yep, in terms of the number the records and observers as well. So we're up to I think, over, oh nearly 200 observers, and we had nearly 3000 observations. So over 500 species were recorded across the central belt on I Naturalist for the City Nature Challenge. So big thank you to everyone who took part. And if you have got records that you're still not uploaded, that they're just sitting on your phone or on your camera, please make sure you put them in, the  do still count to the total numbers. But it's really important that we have those records to.

Stephen Magee  7:12 
 Aye, let's get Edinburgh and Glasgow in the top ten. Yeah, cool.

As I said, we wanted to have a chat about migration. I was up here earlier on just having a listen to find somewhere, I should say actually, we're in a beautiful bit of mixed woodland at Loch Leven reserve and earlier on, it has gone a bit quiet now, but earlier on there were loads of willow warblers here, right, one of our most audible migrants, Jen, from a scientific point of view, right? I suppose the first thing is like, why do birds migrate?

Jen Smart  7:47 
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And it's something that's, you know, evolved over millennia. But really, I mean, it's quite simple what they're doing, they're tracking the food, really, they're tracking the seasonal availability of food. And when a migrant moves from one place to another place, it's leaving somewhere where food supplies are probably becoming low or declining. And it's moving somewhere where they might be high or are starting to increase. So they're just tracking the seasonal food and seasonal food availability tends to be reasonably predictable in different locations. So they know where they can go at different times of the year to get what they need in terms of food.

Stephen Magee  8:21 
And like give us a sense of like the global scale of migration because it is the kind of thing that gives you a bit of a sense of fear. When you begin to think about how many things are cutting about the planet?

Jen Smart  8:32 
Well, I mean, it is I mean, there's stuff moving around the planet all the time. I mean, one of the most amazing migration stories is the bar-tailed godwits. And recently the godwits- we have bar-tailed godwits in this country-

Stephen Magee  8:43 
We should just say for people who don't know, a bar-tailed godwit is a fairly decent sized wader right? You know? So it's like about the size of a curlew or like or no?

Jen Smart  8:53 
No, quite a bit smaller than a curlew, maybe about half the size of a curlew. Maybe about the same size of an oystercatcher but a bit slimmer.

Stephen Magee  8:59 
Right, okay.

Jen Smart  8:59 
 And quite brown and speckled the bar-tailed godwit with a sort of long sort of slightly upturned beak at the end. And we have them here in winter on our estuaries. And the birds that come here for winter migrate up to sort of Northern Scandinavia and beyond to breed. But it's the birds in New Zealand where they've discovered the really amazing migration journeys that they can take. So bar-tailed godwits that winter in New Zealand will breed up in Siberia and Western Canada. And they do an 11,000 kilometre non-stop flight-

Stephen Magee  9:33 
Non-stop!?

Jen Smart  9:33 
Non-stop over the sea. It takes them eight days if they get a proper tailwind behind them. When they leave, their body weight, about 50% of it's fat. And they shrink their internal organs. So the gizzards and the intestines, they don't need that when the flying, they're not feeding, they don't need those organs so they shrink them so there's more space for the fat that they really need and then they'll fly 11,000 kilometres without stopping to get to the wintering grounds in New Zealand.

Stephen Magee  9:59 
I I'm going to ask you to thing I always end up asking scientists, right? How do you know that? How about shrinking an internal organisation? Because cannae like X-ray a godwit in flight?

Jen Smart  10:09 
Yeah, no, but you can X-ray a godwit before it leaves to go on its migration. So, really eminent scientist called Theunis Piersma. He's a Dutch scientist, Dutch wader person. Amazing. He's had some species named after him and everything. He has studied migration in lots of different species of waders and when you catch them pre-migration, and scan them with- oh what's it they use on pregnant women?

Stephen Magee  10:29 
 Like an ultrasound?

Jen Smart  10:29 
Ultrasound! That's it. When you scan them with an ultrasound you can measure the size of their organs and how much fat they're carrying. And they've recorded this and a whole range of species.

Kate Kirkwood  10:38 
Amazing. So if you blow on their tummies, they're gonna have really yellow tummies, aren't they?

Jen Smart  10:41 
When you hold a wader just before it's about to do a long distance migration- I've been to Delaware Bay catching knots just before they migrate. They just feel like little balls of jelly. It feels really weird and squishy, but they are so rotund just before they leave, it's amazing.

Kate Kirkwood  10:48 
Little chunks.

Jen Smart  10:57 
Little chunks, yeah.

Stephen Magee  10:57 
Listen can we hold off the body shaming of waders.

Kate Kirkwood  10:59 
No, i think it's brilliant. It's serving a purpose.

Jen Smart  11:02 
It's serving a big purpose.

Stephen Magee  11:03 
So in terms of that global picture, right? Where does Scotland fit in? How important is Scotland for migrants? And what are the really brilliant things that are happening here?

Jen Smart  11:16 
Yeah, well, I mean Scotland's really important for a whole range of migrants. So, we've got species that are resident in this country, so they're here all year round. We've got species that will come here to breed. And so they're coming probably, you know, from maybe from Iberia, from Portugal and Spain, or maybe down into Africa. Coming up here to breed, some of our long distance migrants, we can hear around us, willow warblers, they will be wintering in South Africa or south of the equator anyway, migrating back here for the summer to breed. Then we've got other species that are going further north to breed and they may winter on our estuaries, or they may pass through here as they migrate north on the way to Iceland to Greenland to Arctic Canada. Or if they go east, they might be going over to you know, up to Finland and Scandinavia and right up into the high Arctic that direction. So there's a whole load of species that are sort of either coming here for summer or passing through on the way to their summering grounds, or coming here and staying for winter. So it's really important. There's movement happening all the time. We say we're in migration season now, but we're sort of never really out of migration season. There's always species coming and going.

Kate Kirkwood  12:15 
It's almost a little bit like it's a really convenient stopover place en route, isn't it?

Jen Smart  12:19 
Yeah, exactly.

Stephen Magee  12:21 
Like Tebay? Other service stations are available. It's my BBC training kicking in.

Kate Kirkwood  12:28 
To be fair, it's a pretty good services. Good migration route.

Stephen Magee  12:31 
Good. Do you ever, like, see when you're thinking about all these birds moving around, and the birds that you see? Does it ever make you feel like a bit pedestrian? You know what I mean? It's like, cuz like, when I even think about like, wee relatively common things like the chiffchaffs that are in the little bit of the wooded ground behind my house where the railway is, right, I think, all the things they've seen and done in their short lives, and I've just been sitting watching telly.

Kate Kirkwood  13:02 
Yeah. And also, I think that's the thing that also surprises me, they don't have particularly short lives, they have to do a couple of migrations, a lot of them before they start breeding. So they've definitely covered a distance. I mean, we always bang on about swifts on this podcast, but even just thinking about other birds that have migrated, the distances they're covering, and they're not big birds, they haven't got the muscle mass, they haven't got the necessarily the same aerodynamics as some of the kind of bigger birds and able to glide in the same way. But I just think there's something quite awesome, in the proper sense of the word, about like these tiny migratory birds too.

Stephen Magee  13:38 
What can we do here to help all those birds that are moving about? What are the key kind of- thinking about science, applied science, right- what are the key things that we need to do?

Jen Smart  13:53 
So the thing that's really tricky with migrant birds, if they're declining, the thing that's really, really tricky is figuring out where the problem might be, you know, so you can study them when they come here to breed. And it might be that actually they're breeding okay, they've got good habitat availability, the habitat quality is really good. You know, it might be actually, there's no, there's no inkling that it might be poor breeding success that's driving the declines. So then you might think, Well, is it something on migration? Or is it something in the wintering grounds? And then that's when we have to try and study migration to understand those things. And then if we do identify it's a problem on migration or a stopover site, then it has to be an international collaboration to be able to do something about it. So it's really important to pinpoint where the issues are for the species. But if the issues are in this country, say it's a winter habitat quality and it might be about you know, lack of decent food on estuaries, because, I don't know, there's some harvesting of cockles or muscles or something that's taken the food away in winter or something like that. Or there's some sort of development you know, that's going to take out half of a really important estuary. That's where you know fighting the fight the campaigning that RSPB does and, you know, helps with our members. That's where we can help that. If it's just about you know, breeding habitat quality, then it's about, you know, doing what we do on all our reserves around here, it's about, you know, knowing what the birds need in terms of their habitat, and then trying to manage it and keep that habitat in good condition for them. Because, like I said earlier, they're tracking the food, if the habitat's not right, the food won't be there. If the food's not there, they can't rear their chicks, the adults can't feed, and then that affects their breeding success and their survival. So it's just about making sure that what the birds are looking for, at different times of the year, are available where they need it, and when they need it.

Kate Kirkwood  15:28 
I suppose that's quite challenging as well at the moment. As we've seen over the last couple of years, like the seasonality, there's been sort of freak weather events, or kind of storm systems moving through when there's big migrations of birds either pushing them further into the UK or kind of holding them up in different places across Europe as well. So I suppose the more frequent, with climate change and the climate crisis, those weather events become, the more difficult your job is understanding what's going on with the migrants.

Jen Smart  15:54 
Yeah, exactly. It becomes really- everything becomes much less predictable, not only for us studying it, but much less predictable for the birds. Their migration routes, once they've decided, once they've done the migration once, the routes tend to be relatively fixed, they tend to stop at the same places, leave at the same time arrive at the same time. And that's all relatively fixed. Anything that happens along the way, or at either end of that journey, prevents them leaving on time, or makes them arrive late can can set the whole year, out of kilter, so to speak. So that's where climate change is really important for migratory birds, because it's just making that seasonal predictability of the food supply becomes so less predictable to them. And it's affecting, disproportionately affecting, places like the Arctic, which are super important for lots of species during the summer.

Stephen Magee  16:38 
Now, one of our summer visitors, I did hint earlier on that I had been very lucky, right. Last week, I went to Oronsay, which is a little island off of Colonsay. And if you don't know where Colonsay is, well, you know, shame on you, but Colonsay is an island off the west coast of Scotland. And one of the main reasons why I went there is because it is one of the best places to, potentially see, but certainly hear a summer visitor, and that summer visitor is corncrake. So I went out in the middle of the night. And this is what I heard.

It is just after midnight, I am on Oronsay, a little island off the coast of Colonsay, which is a medium sized island off the west coast of Scotland. And I am surrounded by calling corncrakes.

This is a really special place for them. There's not many places you can go in the UK and still hear these birds unfortunately. They used to be, you know, a fixture of rural areas, that sound in the night. But now have to travel to a few places in the west and north coast of Scotland and Oronsay is absolutely, categorically one of the best places to go.

And yeah, this is actually my first time hearing corncrakes. And it's really special. It's so loud. Earlier on I was like three or four feet away from them. So I will let you hear what it sounds like when you're three or four feet away from a calling corncrake.

Corncrake  18:39 
Crex crex! Crex crex!

Stephen Magee  19:02 
It's just amazing. It's like it's inside your head. And these birds, their Latin name is Crex crex, which you can totally understand. And you know, when you hear their call "crex crex, crex crex". And they spend the winters in Africa and they come here to breed. And that's why all these boys are out in the field shouting. If it weren't pitch black, I'd be able to see the habitat that they manage here for them. What they need is basically it's cover, like a low cover, like it's kind of like somewhere between ankle and knee height. Nettles and lots of other kind of low plants that provide the corncrake somewhere to hide and shout. I mean, it's a bit weird on one level, that you are going to hide and make a noise like that. But I suppose the point is to declare your territory without exposing yourself to predators or anybody who wishes you ill, which they're doing extremely effectively. But anyway, it's a bit of a milestone for me I have to say. Very exciting. And just a really impressive noise. 

So I don't know if you could tell, but I was quite excited about that. That is something I mean, people overstate things, sometimes, but I have literally waited all my life to hear that. It was amazing, right? So, like, tell me something about corncrakes.

Jen Smart  20:53  
So it's not a species I know a huge amount about but what I do know, what I do know is that, you know, the, the males, the reason they sing so loudly and so prolifically during the season is that they actually, they don't really pair up for very long. So they'll sing, and sing, and sing, and sing from the undergrowth, you know, they like to hide and all the deep vegetation. When they find a female, they'll pair up briefly until she lays the eggs and then he disappears off and starts singing somewhere else to get another female. So there's hardly any- he doesn't really do much apart from sing, and mate and leave. You know, so nothing, nothing new there!

Kate Kirkwood  21:28  
Quite a breeding strategy.

Stephen Magee  21:32  
You heard them?

Kate Kirkwood  21:33  
Yeah, well, yes, I've heard them before. But it was listening to that audio that you done your record on. And just, there's something really visceral about the noise. And it just, I don't know, it reminds me of those, you know, those is called a güiro? 

Stephen Magee  21:48  
The wee scrapey thing?

Kate Kirkwood  21:51  
The wee scrapey thing you used to get in music when you're in primary school and just to make terrible noise with but there's such a visceral noise, it really does something to you, it kind of really, you mentioned, it kind of gets you in the guts a little bit. 

Stephen Magee  22:01  
It totally gets you in the guts, and the other thing that was really interesting about it was like, so obviously, they'd been, like studying the corncrakes on Oronsay for a long time. But there was a really amazing bit where there's a big curved dike, it's like where to two dikes meet, and it makes a natural amphitheatre, and the male bird that gets in there, you can hear him just the whole time, you know, over everybody else. But anyway, it was amazing. And if you ever get the chance to go out at night, somewhere where there's calling corncrakes, I strongly recommend that you do.

Kate Kirkwood  22:36  
And I definitely think as well, like my experience is when I've been camping on the Western Isles and out in the Outer Hebrides, and you're sort of three o'clock in the morning, and it's just beginning to get light. And then the corncrake starts up and you're like, "You're so noisy. I'm really happy for you. I'm really really happy because I knew you're struggling so hard to stay and survive. But really, can you just go to bed for a little bit!".

Stephen Magee  23:09  
So we have taken a little wander down nearer to the water at Loch Leven. So behind us there is a big field which has some nesting lapwing in it and then the other side of us is the loch and the pools, and just tonnes of waders and other stuff and we have come here and talk about waders and mostly talk to Jen about waders to be honest.

Kate Kirkwood  23:35  
She definitely knows more than I do.

Stephen Magee  23:36  
So, Jen, where do waders fit in for you?

Jen Smart  23:41  
Waders fit in for me because probably for about the last 20 odd years maybe even getting on for 25 years now I've had a little bit of an obsession about waders that I sort of first started studying- turnstones were the first wader that I did a study on, wintering turnstones on The Wash. And then I moved on to sort of breeding waders for my PhD and various RSPB work since then, and I've just been obsessed with them ever since really.

Stephen Magee  24:06  
Why waders? 

Jen Smart  24:07  
I don't know really. I think it's the species with the long legs and the long beaks that really get me, so the redshanks and the godwits.

Stephen Magee  24:14  
So we should actually say what are waders.

Jen Smart  24:16  
Yeah, for those that don't know, waders are the, the I mean, the clues in the name really, the group of birds that you see wading around on estuaries in winter, slopping around in the mud feeding on the invertebrates that live in the mud in there. So they are the species that wade and there's about 210 species of wader worldwide.

Stephen Magee  24:36  
210!?

Jen Smart  24:38  
210 yeah. We call them waders, the Americans call them shorebirds? So you might you might hear that term as well.

Stephen Magee  24:43  
And so I'm hesitant to go top five waders or whatever, but like if somebody were a wader sceptic, right? And you were trying to persuade them, what would you tell them about? 

Jen Smart  24:56  
God, that's a tough question. There's just so many stories I mean, redshanks are really close to my heart because I did my PhD on redshanks, and I really liked them because they're quite a hard species study, I like a challenge. So finding their nest is quite hard, but but there's little tells, they've got little tells, when they go back to the nest, they bob their head, and it looks really suspicious. They also, there's a little twist in the grass above the nest that the female does when she's sitting on the nest. And if you can get your eye on that little twist, you can find it easier to find the nest. And then the other thing that you do, the chicks are terrible to find, they're really, really good at running and hiding. And the adults they don't defend the nests, if the nest is threatened they just fly off. But when it comes to the chicks, they go absolutely nuts. But they change the call they make between telling the chicks to hide and telling the chicks to come out and run. And if you get in on that call as well, then sometimes you can you can catch the chicks and monitor the chicks as well. So there's just it's just that sort of challenge. They look great. They sound great. And they're a bit of a challenge.

Stephen Magee  25:57  
See, this is one of the things I think there's a difference between being a scientist in the field, Kate, right, and somebody like you or me, right, which is interesting is like, it's that intimate knowledge.

Kate Kirkwood  26:08  
I think what you just described as this perfect little character is really like brought it to life. And so when you know those things about that particular bird, because you can just be so bombarded by information when you're out looking for certain species, there's so many things to look at: the grasses moving in a certain way, and if you can get your eye in and it guarantees, or not maybe not doesn't guarantee, but it increases the chances of you seeing something, so that for me, hearing that, is like just so exciting. Someone knows how to find them.

Stephen Magee  26:38  
One of the things I think it's really interesting, so with waders like growing up, pretty much all the waders I would have seen going out with the local YOC group would have been in winter, right so we would have gone Skin Flats or like, I was in Dunfermline so we used to go down like Inverkeithing, and see feeding waders in the winter and that was exciting. But breeding waders were something I had never really encountered, a now since I joined RSPB I've been all these places, kind of upland places where they have really different lives. So they have, you know, these kind of split lives, where they're out amongst like, like shorebirds is a good name for them, like in that respect. Right, you know, but but then they become birds of uplands, and kind of hill farms.

Jen Smart  27:23  
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And it's the same as what we talked about earlier with migration. It's about what they're looking for is, where can I go and get the right conditions to find a nest, and rear some young, and that's about where can I go that it's safe to do that, for themselves and the young, and I can find enough food for myself, but my young will be able to find enough food when they hatch from the eggs as well. So it's, it's all about, it's all about resources. It's always about resources. That's all they're looking for, they need to breed, reproduce, and they need to they need to eat, and they need the right habitat that they're going to find those things in. So, so yeah, and it's really interesting, because some species during the breeding season, you can find them in a whole range of different habitats. You know, so curlews, for example, you'll find them, you know, up the hill, on the end by grassland, you'll find them on lowland and wetlands like this sometimes. And you'll also find them sometimes nesting an animal fields, but they're just finding what they need in those places. So it's really interesting that they'll adopt, you know, different things in different places.

Stephen Magee  28:18  
Now, we were talking about, earlier on, about where Scotland fits in, right, in terms of the migration picture globally. But when it comes to waders, Scotland really is, and for a few key species, right, how big a deal is Scotland? And how important is it that we get things right here?

Jen Smart  28:33  
Yeah, Scotland's a massive deal for a whole range of species. So if we think about that, there's the Breeding Bird Atlas that was published in 2011, and that's got really nice information about you know, each bit of land in the UK, which species occupied those bits of land. So if we just think about that, Scotland's got 60% of the oystercatchers, and the ringed plovers, you know, out of the whole country. It's got 40% of the curlews and the redshanks. And it's got about 30% of the lapwings. So those are the sort of the more common widespread species but on top of that, Scotland's also got a whole bunch of species that don't occur anywhere else in the UK, things like whimbrels things like red-necked phalaropes, and things like greenshank, you just don't find them anywhere else, but you find them- they're quite rare and sort of localised in Scotland, but you don't find them anywhere else in the UK. So it's really important for our common and widespread waders. But it's also super important for our rare and localised waders.

Stephen Magee  29:24  
And the other thing I think about, about them is, you know, we're talking about migration earlier on and kind of how it fits in with our idea about seasonality. I don't know about you, but like the sound of curlews-

Kate Kirkwood  29:34  
Yeah, we've had this discussion before because you recognise them as upland birds, whereas I'm like, that's a coastal winter bird, thank you.

Stephen Magee  29:41  
But they're, you know, and peewits, and all these, you know, particularly in farming communities and stuff like that these are birds that really reflect- they're part of our lives too.

Kate Kirkwood  29:48  
Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of is the the arrival of certain birds, the arrival of swallows and swifts. And then you start to see the lapwings. You're like, "oh, right, okay. We're really, really into summer now their, they're nesting and and flying around and soaring.".

Stephen Magee  30:03  
So, in terms of the challenges they face- oh we've got peewit flying right over us. Go on make a peewit noise!

Peewit  30:15  
"peewit!"

Stephen Magee  30:16  
I'll see what it's like when we get back in and edit but I think we just got one one passing comment from a peewit. But what are the challenges that these birds face.

Jen Smart  30:25  
So the challenges in the breeding season that these birds face, I mean, a lot of these species have undergone big historical declines and lots of those declines were mostly about habitat loss, you know, so the grasslands disappearing being ploughed up for agriculture or being drained, developed, all those sorts of things or you know, turned into forestry, a whole range of things means there's a lot less habitat for them. And the habitat that's left is not really pristine in lots of places. So the quality of that habitat reduced, it might have had some chemicals applied, which reduced the soil conditions, reduced invertebrates, it may be bordered with some woodland now that you know, shouldn't be there. These species like open habitats, what they really like is open, wet, boggy, the right grass conditions right sward conditions to nest and, and then the right conditions for lots and lots of invertebrates. So habitat loss, declines in habitat quality. The other thing that's a really big issue for them now, given we've got much smaller populations than we used to have, and they're really concentrated often in nature reserves like this, they suffer predation pressure because of that. So there's a lot more predators in our sort of modern landscapes than there used to be. These birds have got much less habitat, and that puts them under pressure from predators. So there's a whole range of things that they face during the breeding season.

Stephen Magee  31:39  
On the upside, there's an enormous amount of effort going in to try and deal with those challenges, right?

Jen Smart  31:44  
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I mean, the first thing you have to address is the habitat thing, you haven't got the habitat, you won't get the bird, so you're never gonna get any breeding success. So you have to address the habitat problems if there's a habitat issue. We did a great job at Leven here. The predation issue is quite tricky to deal with. And it's really important to understand, it's not just that birds have been predated, that you understand what's doing that predation, and how important it is. Because Because pressure is a natural thing, all species will suffer predation, it's when it's high enough that they can't breed successfully enough, that becomes an issue. If you know what the problem is, then you can think about some solutions. And we've done loads of research over the years trialling different solutions to reduce the impacts of predators. So we're surrounded here by a big predator fence. And myself and my team did loads of work ages ago testing the effectiveness of these fences to see if they increased lapwing productivity. Really, really neat study using lots of fences across lots of reserves and lots of monitoring and discovered that yes, you get a huge increase in their survival when you've got a predator fence there, and it increases overall productivity. So that's now a solution that's rolled out across lots of our reserves.

Stephen Magee  32:49  
And the thing about predation, I mean, predation really is like it's a very live topic when it comes to this right. But what we all want, I think, well certainly RSPB, is we want a situation where we have our predators, because they're because they're a key- some some of the predators are birds, right, and even the ones that aren't birds- are still a key part of the landscape. It's it's about finding a way to have all of those things present, interacting in the, the way that- I was talking to Thjis, who works on curlew stuff at Insh Marshes right, in a video, I'll stick a link to the video in the in the show notes. But what he said to me, which really stuck with me was, I want to look on- they put out these trail cams, that's right, on the nests. And he said, I want to see a predation event, i.e. a predator eating a chick, right? And feel good about it. Because it's part of like a good healthy natural balance, on my reserve rather than feeling bad about it because it means, you know, a further decline in wader numbers. And that's what we're after.

Kate Kirkwood  33:49  
Absolutely. And I think I think when we're talking about protecting nature and restoring habitats and things, it's about finding that balance and in nature, nature when it's not interfered with by humans, which is very rare these days. It finds its own balance, but at the moment with predation events and things like that, the predator numbers are so high in comparison to the breeding birds that actually, like you said, Jen, they can't breed. So we need to be able to find that kind of balance again, and unfortunately, in so many places around the world, not just in Scotland, that balance just isn't there. And we need to work to kind of restore that a bit more. 

Stephen Magee  34:30  
But I don't want to end this in a negative because there is a huge amount of effort going into this. And these are winnable battles, right.

Jen Smart  34:36  
Yeah, absolutely. They're totally winnable battles. And we've seen so many different success stories, you know, different conservation solutions that you can use, and you see wader numbers increasing. I mean, going back to what you're saying there about, you know, trying to find that balance and sort of sustainable, you know, sustainable solution. I mean, a lot of it's about scale. So, you know, we've got we've got nature reserves that are a decent size, but if they were three, four or five, ten times bigger, you know, and being managed in a brilliant way, that balance would be easier to achieve. It's because we're sort of, even on this scale, we're sort of micromanaging still. So making things bigger and more connected and allowing, you know, those natural predator communities and wader populations to build up could easily work. But there are loads of conservation success stories when it comes to waders, you know, the predator fencing has been great. We've been trialling, you know, solutions, really innovative solutions, like head-starting, you know, for some of our really rare species where they're right on the edge of extinction in this country, taking the eggs and chicks into captivity, rearing them where they're safe from predation, releasing them when they fledged, has given, you know, a real boost to some of our really rare wader populations. So there's the stuff we can do now whilst trying to fix the bigger, sustainable solutions.

Stephen Magee  35:42  
Absolutely. There is work being done. The sun has come out at Leven. I'm going to feel good about it. I'm not going to feel bad about it, that's been brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us. If you have enjoyed the podcast, if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe. You can get in touch with us either on Twitter at @RSPBScotland, or you can send us an email at podcast.scotland@rspb.org.uk. And let us know your nature news and what's happening with you. 

Kate Kirkwood  36:12  
Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. And, as always, make sure you click and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, because it helps other people find us in the podcast jungle.

Stephen Magee  36:21  
Absolutely. In all honesty, I have no idea what the next podcast is gonna be about. At this point will be a surprise to me because I haven't worked out yet but it will be something else good and hopefully somewhere sunny and lovely like Loch Leven. But thank you so much for joining us today and goodbye. 

Kate Kirkwood  36:36  
Bye! 

Jen Smart  36:36  
Bye.