Observations of a Little Ringed Plover nest

One of the highlights of 2020 for me was monitoring a little ringed plover nest on the yacht club foreshore at Pennington Flash during the coronavirus lockdown between April and early July. Initially taking advantage of unusually low levels of disturbance due to the lockdown, the pair was seen copulating, a nest site was chosen and four eggs were laid in an area which would normally prove impossible as a breeding site due to high levels of human activity. 

However, the easing of lockdown restrictions in May led to the reopening of the yacht club, which resulted in exceptionally high levels of disturbance from both yachting and open water swimming, as people seemed determined to make up for the lost weeks earlier in the year and were present in even higher numbers than those previously seen. 

I watched these birds daily from arrival to fledging and reported on their remarkable story in a previous blog post. However I struggled to find very much written at all in monograph form about the ecology of little ringed plover and as such decided to compile my sightings into a report in pdf format which is available to download should anybody wish to do so. 

To download, simply click on the "Pop out" icon in the top right of the pdf window, then, if you're using a laptop click on the download icon in the top right of the new window or alternatively if you're using a mobile device click on the three dots at the top right and scroll down to "Download". Simple!