Ways of working for waders, part. I

Every few years, letters land on mats in farmhouses, gamekeepers cottages and estate offices. These letters are opened and read with a cynical, weary indifference. The letter informs the recipient that bird surveyors would very much like to be along shortly to count breeding waders, as part of some large-scale survey or other. The letter will say how important the survey is, how important our breeding waders are, how they are declining drastically, and how the survey data will allow us to finally get to work on reversing those declines. Perhaps one or two recipients will eye up the contact details on the letter and give someone at the other end a piece of their mind; most will get on with their day with a sigh and shrug.

Then the morning of the survey comes, and all they will know of that surveyor might be a car parked in a lay-by, maybe a glimpse of a serious looking clipboard-clutching figure striding over a hillside as a mist lifts. The surveyor will do everything they can to avoid having their bird survey interrupted, so will turn the other way when they hear the whirr of a quad-bike engine approaching and hope it passes. They certainly won't stop for a cup of tea and a chat - goodness knows what that farmer or gamekeeper might say to them - probably rattle on about there being too many predators and moan about Chris Packham.

Many months will pass while the data is collated, analysed and written up a world away from those farmers and gamekeepers. We will assess the research in terms of the perceived quality and robustness of scientific output: scale and scope; randomisation and control; effect sizes and statistical significance; journal metrics and citations, and the grandness of the ecological generalities which can be pronounced.

These ecological generalities will then be wrestled with for a while until they are regurgitated as agri-environment options, and offered back to those same farmers, gamekeepers and land managers. And when they look upon with them, they might well do so with the same cynical weary indifference that they greeted that letter all those years previously.

And while all this was going on, more birds were lost and more farms fell silent, but no matter: it's time for the next letter to hit the mat.

Lapwing chick, Cairngorms, summer 2022