Protecting ground-nesting birds during breeding season

Why spring is such a delicate season on the heath

There is a moment in late March when lowland heath seems to wake up all at once. The gorse is heavy with yellow, the birch buds are breaking, and the first chiffchaffs announce themselves from the scrub. For anyone who loves these landscapes, it is the best time of year to be out in them — and the most dangerous time of year for the wildlife that lives there.

Heathland is rarer than almost any other habitat in Britain. We have lost the great majority of it in the last two centuries, and what remains is fragmented, often surrounded by roads, housing and farmland. That makes every surviving patch precious, and it means the birds that breed on it have very few alternatives if a nesting attempt fails.

Meet the ground-nesters

Many of our most characteristic heathland birds do not bother with trees at all. They lay their eggs straight onto the ground, in a shallow scrape lined with dry grass, moss or heather stems. From above, a nightjar sitting tight on her two eggs looks almost exactly like the leaf litter around her. That camouflage is excellent protection against foxes and crows — but it is no defence at all against a curious spaniel.

The list is longer than most people expect. Curlew, lapwing, skylark, meadow pipit, woodlark, nightjar, stone-curlew and redshank all nest on or very close to the ground, alongside ringed plover and little tern on nearby shingle and dunes. Adders, common lizards and sand lizards bask and give birth in the same warm, open places, and they are just as easily trodden on.

What disturbance actually does

It is easy to assume that a bird flushed from a nest will simply settle back down a few minutes later. Sometimes it does. Often it does not.

• Eggs chill quickly. A clutch left uncovered on a cool April morning can lose viability in under half an hour.
• Nests become visible. Once a sitting bird has been moved on, the eggs are exposed to carrion crows, magpies, foxes and rats, which quickly learn where the easy meals are.
• Chicks scatter. Young nightjar and skylark leave the nest before they can fly. Disturbed broods are often lost to cold, hunger or predators.
• Repeat attempts cost everything. A pair that fails in May may re-lay, but late broods rarely fledge the same number of young — and some species, like curlew, simply run out of season.

A single dog off the lead, running a favourite route twice a day, can quietly empty a whole hectare of nesting habitat over the course of a spring.

Practical things you can do from March to August

The good news is that protecting these birds takes very little effort — just a bit of forethought and a shorter lead.

• Keep dogs on a lead. On open access land in England and Wales, dogs must be on a lead of no more than two metres between 1 March and 31 July. That is not bureaucracy; it is the single most effective thing you can do for ground-nesting birds. Use a short lead rather than a long line, and keep the dog close to the path.
• Stick to marked paths. Obvious as it sounds, the worn sandy tracks are usually routed to avoid the best nesting habitat. Walking ten metres into the heather to "get a better look" may take you straight through a scrape.
• Read the signs. Where wardens put up temporary notices, closures or rope lines, they are almost always reacting to a specific nest or a sensitive area. They come down again by late summer.
• Learn the alarm calls. A skylark rising and hovering above you, or a lapwing tumbling and calling, is telling you exactly where the nest is. Back away the way you came.
• Leave the drone at home. Aerial disturbance can empty a breeding site in a single afternoon, and it is illegal to fly near wildlife in many circumstances.
• Keep to the main tracks at dawn and dusk. Nightjar and woodlark are most active — and most vulnerable — in the low light of early morning and evening.

How the heath is managed, and how you can help

Conservation of these birds is not just about staying away. Heathland needs active management to stay open and varied: light grazing with cattle or hardy sheep, controlled burning or mowing of older heather, cutting back birch and pine scrub, and keeping bracken in check. All of this creates the patchwork of short, warm, bare ground and taller cover that ground-nesters need, and it happens best when visitors respect the areas that have been left alone to recover.

If you walk the same heath regularly, you can also make yourself genuinely useful. Local conservation groups and site wardens rely heavily on volunteers to monitor nests, count breeding pairs and help with practical tasks through the autumn and winter. Report anything that worries you — a stray dog repeatedly chasing birds, an abandoned fire, a nest that has been trampled — to the site's contact point.

The birds will be gone by late summer, and the heath will feel open and forgiving again. Until then, keep the lead short, keep to the path, and let the scrape in the heather go unnoticed. That is the whole trick of it.