Status of the Baltic Dunlin Calidris alpina in Lithuania

Abstract

Breeding Dunlins in Lithuania have not attracted much attention since fieldwork for the Lithuania Bird Atlas in the 1990s. In order to assess the present status of the threatened Baltic Dunlin population in Lithuania, we surveyed most of the former key breeding sites for the species in May 2011 and recorded current land use. We found no breeding Dunlins in Lithuania and at the majority of the former breeding sites current land use no longer affords suitable habitat. Dunlins have suffered from a reduction in the intensity of grazing and a lowering of the water table in their former coastal meadow habitats. A broad suite of other meadow breeding waders have also disappeared from these areas; moreover the globally red-listed Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola has declined markedly in the same habitatVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij