Linnet - now abundant at Loddington again |
Where does this leave birds? Let’s accept that birds have an important
cultural value. Birds inspire us. They provide the focus of attention for
millions of bird watchers across the world, and bring satisfaction to countless
others who observe them more casually.
Farmers are no exception. As our
recent PhD student, Susanne Jarratt was able to demonstrate, farmers learn about
birds through their participation in agri-environment schemes and develop an
appreciation of them. Nearly a thousand
farmers across the UK took part in this year’s Big Farmland Bird Count. And let’s not forget that it was the study of grey partridges in Sussex, started by Dick Potts in the 1960s, that inspired
the research that underpins our current understanding of the farmland
ecosystem. More recent research
demonstrated that songbirds such as skylarks and corn buntings benefit from the
management of farmland for partridges.
So what about the songbirds at
Loddington? What have my two hundred
early morning bird counts revealed? They
show that songbird numbers have changed considerably in response to game
management on the farm. Following a
baseline year in 1992, when we made no changes to the management, songbird
numbers had doubled by 1999 following seven years of management for wild game. From 2001, we kept the habitat management
going, but stopped the predator control, and then from 2006, we also stopped
the provision of winter food. Songbird
numbers dropped until, in 2009, they were little higher than the 1992 baseline.
Songbird numbers are once again almost twice as high as in the baseline year of 1992 |
Introducing a reared pheasant shoot with
limited predator control in 2011 did not result in the increase we had seen in
the early years of the project. However, research carried out by John Szczur and Patrick White identified the
importance of predator control for some species and we have taken the decision
to increase predator control specifically for these birds in the past couple of
years. Songbird numbers are now 90%
higher than they were in 1992, while numbers in the wider countryside remain
relatively constant.
While not all birds have increased, those which have include iconic species such as song thrush, whose song is appreciated by numerous visitors to Loddington each spring, and the more subdued spotted flycatcher which makes the remarkable 8,000 mile round trip from West Africa to join us each year. Tree sparrows are now on more or less permanent view from our visitor centre, and blackbirds, linnets and chaffinches are amongst the other species to be thriving. That is surely something to celebrate.