Little and Large?

 Lapwing is a species of much concern as their numbers are under threat, so we have been working closely with a couple of farmers who have had nesting Lapwing on their land. 

On one their were three early nests and two broods hatched. The parents moved the chicks quickly away from the ever present threat from corvids and we haven't seen them since, so we have no idea of their success. The third brood was a bit later in hatching and we watched the adults take them into an adjoining early cereal crop where we are pretty sure they still are--fingers crossed. As I write there are another two sitting birds which we are keeping a close eye on.

At our other farm, there are definitely 3 nests, with another 2 or three also sitting. The first of these hatched in the last few days and yesterday we manged to quickly find the chicks to ring them using our thermal imaging camera. This enables us to find and ring the chicks within minutes and ensures the adults are back on the scene very quickly.

To say Lapwing chicks are adorable is a bit twee--but so accurate as I think you'll agree!

Here are the 4 bundles of fluff--each showing the white collar by which the adult birds locate the chicks. To help the chicks hide from predators even in quite open land the chicks stay still and hide the white collar as soon as the parents alarm call:-

And suddenly they take on the appearance of a lump of soil or dead vegetation. This is where the thermal imager comes into its own because it can take ages to find the chicks with the naked eye. However, these little mites still have a tough journey ahead of them towards fledging from a predators ranging from crows to weasels to foxes to squirrels--good luck little ones.

In the meantime we managed to catch a Buzzard!! This is only the second full grown Buzzard we have ringed in 40+ years. It provides an interesting challenge to new ringers who need to be very carefull of the talons while safely handling and ringing these birds. Apart from being a little angry with having its day disturbed the bird flew off after only a few minutes of ringing and a quick picture.

This shows the classic colour pattern of a Common Buzzard, with a dark brown chest leading to a white belly with brown streaks, getting gradually darker to the tail. There are many colour variants of this species but most of them show this basic pattern,