Wild Animals

Wild Lapwing Winter Flocks

Lapwings form large winter flocks that provide collective vigilance and access to areas with invertebrate prey, and their welfare during cold snaps depends on access to unfrozen ground.

Key Facts

UK lapwings are joined in winter by migrants from northern Europe, forming flocks of thousands
Hard frosts force lapwings to move westward to find unfrozen ground for probing for worms
Cold weather mortality can be significant when snow cover persists for more than 3-5 days
Wet agricultural lowlands provide critical winter feeding habitat for lapwing flocks

Welfare Considerations

Lapwings in hard weather are unable to probe frozen ground for earthworm prey, causing rapid energy depletion. Flocks forced to move repeatedly in cold weather exhaust energy reserves that cannot be replenished. Farmland that retains unfrozen wet areas during frost events provides critical refugia that determine overwinter survival for individual birds.

What You Can Do

Support agri-environment schemes maintaining wet grassland as winter lapwing habitat
Advocate for management of water levels on nature reserves to maintain soft ground in winter
Contribute to WeBS and BTO winter atlas surveys that track lapwing winter distribution
Report large lapwing flocks and cold weather movements to local bird recorders