News from the RSPB site

Farmland is proving vital to birds that should be nesting on a nature reserve in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

The second year of a project looking after lapwings nesting on arable land close the RSPB's Ouse Washes nature reserve has recorded an increase in the birds on farmland – while they still struggle to survive on the flooded grassland of the reserve.

Last year's project resulted in finding two main breeding areas, supporting 22 pairs of lapwings, and this has grown to 39 nests on arable land on five different farms.

The increase is mostly partly due to a bigger effort this year with a team of six RSPB volunteers covering some 580 hectares (more than two square miles) of farmland.

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