Ground-nesting birds.

Where do birds nest? In trees, obviously: everybody knows that! Except, it’s wrong.

Low down---in dense cover.

Rooks' nests are really conspicuous because they are built in groups in the very early spring in the tops of bare trees. It’s the same for the big stick-ball nests of magpies, carrion crows, herons and cormorants. You just can’t miss them. Some birds definitely and undisputedly nest in trees.

By the end of April the trees are clothed in greenery and it is no longer easy to count the big nests of those common birds. In hedges and bushes, our most familiar garden birds such as robins, thrushes and blackbirds will have nested unseen, low down, in dense cover. At the same time, every available hole and crevice will have been occupied by starlings, blue-tits and great tits.

Chiffchaff. Sings in the trees....nests on the ground.

Leaving our leafy gardens for a drive into the largely treeless and hedge-less East Anglian countryside we might still find birds. Skylarks, pipits, lapwings, and partridges all nest on the ground. If we visit a lake to see ducks, geese, swans, moorhens, coots, gulls, terns, snipe and oystercatchers; that whole wetland tribe of birds will nest on the ground.

Even in the oak and ash-woods with their carpet of bluebells, many birds nest on the ground. Chiffchaffs and willow warblers, black caps and nightingales will be singing up there in the boughs, but they will nest with the woodcocks and pheasants among the ferns, sedges, nettles, dog’s mercury and brambles. 

Almost all of our birds in the UK and across Europe are in steep decline, especially the ground nesters that are most prone to disturbance and predation as well as having to face the gauntlet of migration.  On nature reserves like Paxton Pits, our job is to produce a surplus of birds and other wildlife to repopulate the largely deserted countryside around us.

That’s why we ask dog owners to keep dogs on leads in those areas where we know we have ground nesting birds in summer. Your dog is your friend but also your responsibility and even the most friendly, well behaved dog will disturb wildlife.  Imagine that your dog is snuffling around the shore of a pond and a moorhen flies out, leaving it's nest unprotected. The dog won’t steal the eggs, but a crow may have been waiting for this very opportunity.

Please help us to increase our breeding bird population by keeping to the paths and having your dog on a lead where the signs request it.