The count aims to raise awareness of the vital role that farmers play in the conservation of farmland birds, and to provide a snapshot of the bird population on UK farms during a specific period. The count also helps to measure the impact of the conservation work that many farmers and shoots carry out, such as providing extra food and habitat for birds.
The results have shown that many of the farmers and land managers who participate are involved in landscape-scale conservation projects, such as farmer clusters, and that even more are in some form of agri-environment agreement.
The BFBC helps us spot trends and changes in the abundance of certain species, such as we have seen in yellowhammers.
Over the past 10 years, the results have shown that four times as many yellowhammers were seen on farms with both an agri-environment scheme and supplementary feeding in place, compared to farms with no scheme or feeding.
Patrick Barker, whose family farms 545 hectares of arable land in Suffolk:
“We helped launch the Big Farmland Bird Count nearly a decade ago and have been taking part every year since then. The count has helped us enormously to understand where and how we can improve habitats for birds and help them breed successfully.
“We are still producing the crops, we can do it with the backdrop of having birds flying round, having ponds with great crested newts and hedges with linnets nesting in them. This is just about balancing it all together and making sure the whole ecosystem works, and ultimately, we have a business that is sustainable.
“Getting farmers thinking about the wildlife they have is just a natural step now into the world we’re moving into, where there is much more incentive for good environmental management.”
Rob Shepherd, lead farmer on the Martin Down Supercluster:
Sarah Righton, Old Farm, Dorn, near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire:
“In 2011 we were involved in a survey with the RSPB, at this point there were around 30 species on the Red List and we recorded 6 on the farm. We have a 300 acre mixed farm, livestock and arable, small fields, mature hedges, pond areas and Simon plants wild bird cover crops in the spring to provide food for the birds over winter.
“We know we have plenty of birds around but I guess unless we sit down and take note of them we don’t know which ones. Taking part in the Big Farmland Bird Count is a great opportunity to get involved on a national scale, there are now 73 birds on the red list and 126 on the amber list so the more people who get involved the better – we can see if what we have been doing over the last decade has made a difference and it will give us a starting point for planning what we can do in the future.”
Teyl de Bordes, Whitmuir Estate factor, Selkirk, Scottish Borders:
“We will be taking part in the Big Farmland Bird Count once again. We have done so since year one. We find it helps us gather data on the effect of over 20 years winter feeding of small farmland birds like the large mixed finch flocks. We have never had two counts with almost the same range of species seen. This shows the effect of the weather at the time. We tend to have more birds during snow events. We normally invite a different person to do the count each year. This helps us involve local birders in the work we do. The more farms take part the more valuable the data is.”
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