In a rapidly changing world, wintering waders face unprecedented challenges. How much flexibility is there for individuals to cope with issues such as over-fishing of shellfish stocks, habitat removal, pollution, and the effects of rapid climate warming on their food supplies?
Colour-ring records show that many wintering waders tend to be site-faithful, feeding in the same estuaries and even the same small patches year after year. This makes sense if food supplies are reliable and predictable but what happens when there is massive change in food abundance? In a2021 paper in MEPS, Katharine Bowgen and co-authors describe the impacts of a cockle die-off in the Burry Inlet (part of the Severn Estuary in Wales) on the local population of Eurasian Oystercatchers. Their findings illustrate how important it is to protect networks of sites, rather than individual inlets or estuaries.
Assessing the options
When food supplies are low –…
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