Over the past month, lapwings have mostly stayed put, with only rare exceptions. We even received (unfortunately, just once) a signal from the French wintering ground from our first woodcock, Turbo. Sadly, short days and winter weather have been causing us some trouble lately. The lapwings that are wintering in the eastern half of France are recharging very poorly, making their transmissions rather unreliable. Let’s hope this improves soon with the lengthening of the days!
At the moment, it seems the lapwings really are fully settled in their wintering grounds, although we can’t rule out the possibility that one might still take off and change its “winter quarters” (see Amálka’s move to Spain on December 12). And soon, we can expect the first lapwings to start making their way back home (in recent years, the first lapwings have been observed arriving in the Czech Republic already around late January to early February!). After all, multiple stopovers in different wintering sites are nothing unusual in the bird world. A beautiful example can be seen in the Dutch population of color-ringed black-tailed godwits (Hooijmeijer et al., 2024). A detailed look into their migration habits shows that, for instance, in September on the Iberian Peninsula, some latecomers (stopping there on their way to African wintering sites) mingle with the earliest returnees already heading back from Africa—plus those that actually treat the Iberian Peninsula as their final, fully sufficient wintering ground. Terms like “migration stopover” and “wintering site” thus become rather blurred.
Nevertheless, in general, we appear to be at a point where lapwings have finished their autumn migration. This is a good time to summarize what we’ve learned during our first season of monitoring these crested ladies. We should note here that while our sample likely represents much (if not most) of the (eastern) Czech population, any numerical estimates must be taken with a large grain of salt. After all, with any research, there’s always a risk of random error—and with a sample this size, that margin of error may be quite significant.
Migration clearly occurs in two distinct waves, which are very clearly separated in time (Figure 1). During the first wave, at the turn of June and July, about one third of the (tagged) lapwings left the Czech Republic. This wave likely overlaps with a period in the Czech landscape when there is the greatest shortage of open, low-vegetation habitats that lapwings need. When we ventured out to see the lapwings at that time, we found them either on the few small “bald patches” in not-yet-grown crops or on habitat types that are rather unusual for today’s Czech Republic—such as horse pastures, sand pits, or fields of sprouting onions. Then, as continuing harvests created new open spaces suitable for lapwings, the migration halted, and the birds fed happily in ever-larger flocks on freshly plowed fields. They were probably prompted to leave only by the shortening day length combined with the onset of autumn weather. The first to head off was Prskavka on October 6, and the main departure peak fell between October 22 and 25, when a total of five lapwings left (i.e., a quarter of all the tagged birds!). The last straggler was Drahuš, who delayed departure until November 26—she even stayed with a flock of about 30 companions through the first snowfall.
Meanwhile, as more lapwings continued to arrive in France (it would be presumptuous to claim a direct connection, but the timing is striking—see Figure 1), some of the lapwings from the first wave (after more than three months in France) decided to move on to the Iberian Peninsula. As of now, at least six lapwings have made this move. If we look at how the second wave of migration proceeded (see the detailed description of the first wave in the September blog), it again held true that the birds flew mainly at night. However, the second wave was somewhat faster, and the record for the longest uninterrupted flight in a single night was repeatedly broken. In the end, it remained with Nerea, who, between November 10 and 11, flew 1,292 km in an 18-hour nonstop flight.
Now let’s consider whether these observed patterns fit with our previous assumptions and ideas about the migration and wintering of our lapwings. The perspective we’ve had so far was based primarily on analyzing a dataset of approximately 600 recoveries of ringed lapwings collected over more than 70 years. The analysis was done for the Atlas of Bird Migration (Adamík P. in Cepák, J., et al. 2008). Based on that analysis, we expected our lapwings’ wintering sites to be broadly dispersed from the Benelux countries through southern England, France, the Iberian Peninsula, and North Africa, all the way to Italy.
So far, however, that’s not what we’re seeing. At least for the time being, our lapwings have behaved in a much more “orderly” fashion! Not only is the choice of countries they’ve picked for their winter quarters fairly modest, but within France or Spain, the areas in which they occur (and their migration routes) are, for now, relatively narrowly defined. From the Czech Republic, the lapwings usually set off in a relatively narrow corridor that roughly cuts through Luxembourg. Possibly the biggest surprise is the significance that eastern France—especially the region roughly defined by historic Champagne—seems to have for our lapwings. Anyone (like the author of these lines) surprised to see lapwings in the famed wine region might note that there are actually relatively few vineyards in the area. The name of the region (and indeed of that local “fizzy beverage”) is derived from the word champ, which means “field” in French. What matters to us is that, whereas the maps based on recoveries of ringed lapwings show this area as practically empty, nearly all of our lapwings have at least briefly stopped here—many stayed for several months—and some appear to be planning to spend the entire winter in this region (or in the region just west of there, south of Paris). It’s therefore obvious that this area is crucial for our lapwing population (and for their conservation).
Those lapwings that did decide to leave central France again traveled in a fairly narrow corridor southwest toward the coast of the Bay of Biscay. This, on the other hand, is an area that, based on the migration atlas, could be considered the single most important lapwing wintering site in France. Yet in the end, only Belinda (and, to some extent, Lulu) have actually stayed there to winter. Most of the lapwings that ventured that far ended up leaving entirely and are now wintering on the Iberian Peninsula. And it should be noted that our lapwings’ wintering locations on the Iberian Peninsula more or less align with the findings for our ringed birds presented in the migration atlas—that is, the highest densities are along the Spanish-Portuguese border in the southern half of the peninsula.
How should we explain the significant differences between the insights provided by our telemetrically tracked lapwings and those suggested by the atlas, which is based on decades of banding efforts? There are several possible explanations. One is that our sample (which includes only adult females from eastern Bohemia) might be skewed compared to the rest of the Czech population. For example, the atlas indicates that juveniles and birds from the southern half of our country are more likely to winter in Italy. However, such reasoning doesn’t really account for the near-complete absence of ring recoveries in the Champagne region (which, based on our data, should host an enormous concentration of Czech lapwings).
Partly for this reason, we plan to travel to France in January to investigate the wintering lapwings in this region in person. Naturally, we’ll share a report from this planned (roughly week-long) trip with you here on the blog and on social media. So, you can look forward to news straight from the wintering grounds! And that’s all for today—let’s wish each other (and our crested friends) all the best in the New Year!
Figure 1: Timing of major movements during the autumn migration.
Figure 2: Route of the record-breaking nonstop flight, during which Nerea covered nearly 1,300 km in 18 hours.
Used literature:
Adamík P. in Cepák, J., et al. 2008 Atlas migrace ptáků ČR a SR. Aventinum, Prague.