The Northern Lapwing, Vanellus vanellus, is in decline, but new research by Cevenini & colleagues shows that Italian farmers could make a difference by making space for the birds in intensively farmed land, through managing the plants in their habitat.
The team found that most lapwings chose crop fields to nest in though wetlands were often chosen too. But not all crops were equal. The lapwings only nested in summer crops. They particularly liked maize fields. But they totally avoided the winter crops, like wheat, and hay fields.
The reason was plant height and coverage. Being a wetland bird the Northern Lapwing likes sparse vegetation, and for newly planted summer crops, the fields have a lot of bare soil available for nesting. The taller the plants and the more plant coverage there was, the less the lapwings nested.
Bare soil is where lapwings like to forage, and GPS tracking revealed they don’t like to travel far from the nest, just 207 metres on average. This indicates how important high-quality habitat within nesting range is. But that’s a problem if you’re a cropland lapwing. Crops aren’t bare soil.
The lapwing ranges were surprisingly large, 56ha. This was much more than previously reported elsewhere. Cevenini & colleagues say “we might speculate that the reason for greater home ranges in our study is related to the overall low quality of the intensive agroecosystem of the Po Plain…”
This habitat quality also explains a difference in lapwing foraging strategies. Lapwings nesting in wetlands foraged exclusively in wetlands. The lapwings in croplands in contrast foraged both in croplands and wetlands, indicating these birds had to explore more of their environment.
This difference was also visible in the shape of lapwing territories. Lapwings nesting in wetlands had more fragmented, “disjointed” home ranges than those in croplands, suggesting wetland birds find rich foraging in specific patches while cropland birds need to explore more widely.
The cropland lapwings face a further problem. The crops grow. Cevenini & colleagues describe the fields as ‘ecological traps’ because while they initially provide bare ground, nests become damaged or destroyed by machinery during farmwork, before the chicks fledge.
The authors say their research shows an urgent need for conservation management. For wetlands, maintaining short vegetation is crucial. In the fields, creating bare-ground patches can help the lapwings. Even better, delaying machine work till later in the season would be a benefit.
It seems the lapwings choose both croplands and wetlands for nesting, because there is no single best choice for the species to make. Cevenini & colleagues emphasise the importance of variety in the landscape, interspersing agricultural land and wetland, so the birds have alternatives available.
Cevenini, D., Cecere, J.G., De Pascalis, F., Tinarelli, R., Kubelka, V., Serra, L., Pilastro, A., & Assandri, G. (2025). Habitat selection of the threatened northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) breeding in an intensive agroecosystem. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 71:30. https://doi.org/n9td
Cross-posted to Bluesky & Mastodon.
Image: Canva.
Related