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Five-Year Whinchat Study Suggests Delaying Mowing Until After 23 July

Male whinchat perched in meadow vegetation
Conservation · Management

Five breeding seasons of monitoring in Ireland’s Shannon Callows produced a framework for timing meadow mowing around whinchat (Saxicola rubetra) breeding. The study, published on 7 January 2026, monitored 181 territories and combined the local breeding data with published demographic rates to estimate what proportion of broods would need to survive for a theoretically stable population.

Map of the Shannon Callows whinchat study area in central Ireland
The Shannon Callows study area in central Ireland. Figure 1 from Gray et al. (2026), CC BY 4.0.

Across the five survey years, 157 breeding pairs and 24 single males were recorded. Between 2018 and 2020, 68% of nests produced fledglings. Using demographic rates from earlier studies, the authors calculated that a theoretical stable population would require 80.6% of broods to survive. In their five-year fledging dataset, that threshold was reached on 14 July.

Annual variation shaped the mowing recommendation

Because fledging dates varied among years, the researchers built that annual variation into the recommendation. This moved their suggested mowing date to after 23 July to reduce the risk to later broods. They also proposed protecting roughly 90% of broods as a pragmatic compromise between the calculated minimum of 80.6% and full protection.

The authors stress that the 80.6% threshold is an informed estimate rather than a precise prediction for the Shannon Callows. The demographic rates used in the calculation came from studies elsewhere in the species’ range because equivalent estimates are not yet available for the Irish population. The framework can therefore be updated if Irish survival and productivity estimates become available.

Mowing date alone weakly predicted breeding success

The direct link between mowing date and breeding success was weak. Later mowing initially appeared to coincide with greater breeding success, but this pattern was not robust when the researchers tested it further. The authors therefore caution that mowing timing alone is unlikely to explain breeding success in the Shannon Callows; habitat structure, prey availability, predation and weather may also matter.

Sources and image credit

  1. Gray, A., Walsh, G., de la Peña, E., Copland, A. S., & McMahon, B. J. (2026). Influence of mowing timing on the breeding success of an endangered ground-nesting migratory bird, Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra). European Journal of Wildlife Research, 72, 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-025-02045-9Primary open-access research article published 7 January 2026. Five breeding seasons in the Shannon Callows monitored 181 territories; the authors developed a mowing-date framework based on fledging phenology and demographic rates, while finding that mowing timing alone weakly explained reproductive success.

Image: Friedhelm Schnurbus — male whinchat (Saxicola rubetra) in Nuhnewiesen nature reserve east of Hallenberg, Sauerland, Germany; Wikimedia Commons; representative species image, not a bird from the Shannon Callows study · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source

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