Inundated parcels for meadow birds.
Abstract
Parcel inundation has become a common management practice within agricultural nature conservation areas within the Netherlands. Research has been conducted on the value of inundated parcels as foraging habitat for meadow bird chicks. A comparison has been performed between 20 parcels with and 20 parcels without parcel inundation. This research covered insect abundance, vegetation structure and the abundance of meadow bird families. On inundated parcels; * insects smaller as well as larger than four millimetres where more abundant; * the vegetation was more fordable; * the vegetation had a greater diversity in terms of structure and height; * foraging chicks of the black-tailed godwit, common redshank and northern lapwing were more abundant. Based on the results as described above it can be concluded that inundated parcels are more suitable as a foraging habitat for meadow bird chicks than parcels without inundation of drainage ditches.