The Great Snipes from the Upper Narew Valley are already in Africa (our telemetric researches showed that in average the autumn departure starts on 18th August). Young birds leave a little later. For us it is the moment of summing up results of the lekking grounds monitoring in 2016. In this season 7 different lekking grounds, gathering in total from 40 to 61 males, were found in the valley.  The result is especially interesting as after extreme drought in the previous year we had expected rather downward trend of the population.

Meanwhile inventory results indicate a growth of the mean number of Great Snipe by 14% comparing to 2014. Exceptionally good news for us was founding of two new lekking grounds,  one of which not only was established on lands restored in the course of the project, but also turned out to be the third biggest in the valley, gathering 8-10 males. We hope that thanks to restoration of over 260 ha of meadows and developing  ways of managing of Great Snipes habitats, we will observe the growth of the population of this endangered species in the coming years.

Michał Korniluk