Watch your step this breeding season
As children we were taught that birds nest in trees, and whilst many species do indeed build their home on the branches and in the trunks of many trees, there are many more that will nest on the ground. This may seem a little strange, as surely it would make them more vulnerable to predation. Well not necessarily. Nests on the ground are superbly camouflaged using the habitat and environment around them.
Chiffchaffs and willow warblers make nests in low vegetation and often in the grass itself. Similarly, linnets, meadow pipits and skylarks will make their nests on the ground in open countryside and farmland, with nothing to show but a small depression lined with grass. Yellowhammers and corn buntings prefer the edges of fields bringing their little cups of grass closer to pathways.
Lapwings are often seen rising nervously from grasslands where they make a small scrape or depression in the ground covered by grass and redshank will also choose to nest on these surroundings. Shingle beaches are the preferred nesting habitat of numerous shore-breeding birds including terns, oystercatchers and ringed plovers. They also make a shallow scrape in the shingle but their eggs, and the chicks when they hatch, are so well camouflaged that you are likely to tread on them rather than see them in time. Of course, all manner of ducks, waders and wildfowl will nest on and around the shores of ponds and lakes, with a variety of scrapes, hollows and vegetated nests, some obvious and some, again distinctly not.
It is, therefore, unsurprising that disturbance is the one of the major causes of brood failure in ground nesting birds. So, what can we do? The simplest thing is probably the most effective – watch your step this breeding season, keep to paths and please keep dogs on leads in the countryside and on reserves until at least after the breeding season is over. Doing so will give ground nesting birds the best chance of rearing families successfully and give us the pleasure of seeing and hearing them again next year.