Keep dogs on leads 1st March - 31st July to protect groundnesting birds

[Scrowy]

This is my (now) annual reminder.

If you are walking across farm land or open access land with your dogs please PLEASE keep the dog on a lead during ground nesting season.

your lovely dog does not mean any harm but startling the parent birds off the nest leaves the nest vulnerable to other predators. Crows, stoats, weasels, foxes, badgers, gulls, squirrels (they love eggs!), magpies, rats etc all take advantage of a unattended nest.

It is the law to keep dogs on a lead on open access land (so most National park land during 1st March and the 31st July.

it's also lambing time in many places and sheep worrying is on the rise.

thankyou

So important, thanks for the reminder. I’ve never quite got the measure of when/whether it’s ok for our dog to chase about after/around seashore birds. It’s common, but it surely can’t be good for the birds, even in winter w no chicks or nests

Personally I think it's one of those things that has become normalised but is never actually OK.

Was less of an issue when fewer people had dogs as the disturbances were infrequent when they happened rather than every 10 mins.

professional dog walkers are THE WORST

the problem is that ground nesting season often coincides with farmers bringing their sheep home for lambing which leaves the fells 'empty'.

Lots of people see this as the green light to let the dogs go free - actually it's the most sensitive period for groundnesting birds and the damage done by free ranging dogs is immeasurable.

boosting this message - it is so important.

every time you see a bunch of birds flying up ahead of a running dog, people think 'oh, its OK, the birds flew away'. but they left a cold nest behind and will be scared to come back and sit on that nest again. and when they are disturbed off the nest dozens of times in a day, that means the chicks won't develop. :-(

please keep dogs on leads

EXACTLY

if the owner even clocks it they might see 'dog startled bird - bird flew away'

what they don't see is the nest with 2 - 3 beautiful speckled curlew eggs in it.

they don't see the crow swoop in and peck into the eggs while the parent curlew circles making it's distinct cry.

they don't see the dog snuffle the nest, perhaps gulp down an egg in seconds before running off.

they don't see the runner and dog 5 mins behind them do the exact same thing.

or the one 5 minutes behind that one.

They don't see the eggs go cold and fail to develop because the parent abandons the nest.

For bird like curlews that return to their nesting sites every year, several years of failed clutches means no more curlews. At all.

It's an important message

And all too often ignored - even in places where there are also deer (where dogs must be on leads during the birthing season March-July, to protect both the young deer and the dogs, as the parents might go for a dog they see as a threat)

And an appeal also to people not to cut their garden hedges between the same dates because of hedge nesting birds - the spring and summer is punctuated by the constant buzz, hum and whine of 'tidy minded gardeners' manicuring their hedges without a thought for all the nests, eggs and nestlings being annihilated in the process.

Thank you... I genuinely didn't know this, and am often in very rural areas with my dog.. long line it is! (She's not a bird chaser at all, but she would chase deer for sure!)

It's not ok - every unnecessary takeoff wastes their energy.

Or trim the ivy ...if I've not tamed the stuff growing on our fences by March I have to leave them till the back end as there's bound to be nests in there somewhere.

I had no idea of this so thank you for the OP. I don't have a dog (nor am v good at cutting hedges) but I will certainly make sure none are cut between those two dates.

Quite so @ErrolTheDragon, so unneccessary, slightly raggedy hedges are a small price to pay in order to protect so many vulnerable species. In fact, it is high time that cutting of garden and domestic hedges was subject to the same legislation as farm hedges.

That'd probably result in a lot of people choosing to just have fences instead though, so might be counterproductive.

Sorry @Scrowy, I've hijacked your thread! But with the same sentiments in mind.

What about all the bloody cats? There are more cats than dogs around here and the poor birds don’t stand a chance.

Not many cats out on moorlands or foreshores though.

Thanks for the info! will be mindful with our dog who has unfortunately picked up the bird chasing habit (but just in city parks so far)

More the merrier.

Every positive human change to protect habitat for nesting birds is a win .

Very few people out there are actively choosing to cause harm, but they can't make the changes needed if they don't know they are causing harm in the first place.

@ErrolTheDragon, quite possibly, sadly, in the same way that people turn their gardens into wildlife deserts with block paving, fake grass, shingled beds and decking - all equally abhorrent!

Bells should be mandatory.

@Scrowy, I totally agree - I am sure that most people would be horrified if they actually realised how devastating their actions can be and are not acting out of malice, more lack of thought...

Unfortunately, even dogs on leads cause significant disturbance to birds, much more than a person on their own.

Wading birds on the seashore are particularly vulnerable to disturbance at high tide, while they're waiting for the tide to go out so they can forage on the exposed mud etc. They want to stand around and conserve energy, not have to fly around because they are continually disturbed by people and dogs.

Honestly I think this is ridiculous. People have walked dogs for years and we still have birds.
Maybe direct your anger to pollution/ development/ changes to agriculture?

Thank you for sharing. I have my first ever dog this year and hadn't considered this yet.

Yes @ismu, we still have birds, but far fewer than we used to and many species are in severe decline. As @Scrowy, has highlighted, one of the causal factors is, undoubtedlly, disturbance of ground nesting species by dogs. To say that people have walked dogs for years, therefore it is not a problem is both cavalier and dismissive - we have done many things for years which we now recognise to be harmful and destructive to wildlife and the environment. And @Scrowy point about lambs being vulnerable is also highly pertinent, not to mention the risk to the young of many other animals

The type of dog walking and the type of access to the countryside HAS changed though.

the open access fell we have rights to graze is about 6000 acres. When it was heavily grazed by sheep and mostly untouched by the general public it was riddled with curlew, oyster catchers, skylarks, snipe etc. since about 2001 numbers have horrifically declined.

The curlews have now pretty much all gone.

it's now farmed far less intensively than it was when all those birds were prevalent. I can now stand at my gate and watch 20 walkers/runners an hour pass on a sunny weekend. Half of those probably have dogs and about 80% of those with dogs have them off lead and running happily across the fell.

we stilll have two nesting pairs of curlew. In the one block of land on the farm that has zero public access. It's very heavily grazed, but otherwise undisturbed by humans.

it's not all dogs (don't get me started on the damage 'rewilding' does to the habitat of upland groundnesting birds) but they don't help.

if by 'birds' you mean corvids and gulls - birds that have adapted to surviving on human activity, then yes there are plenty of 'birds'. I'm talking about all the other birds.