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Simple Options Can Benefit Birdlife – Study Suggests

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) (opens in new window)

An Auchincruive based SAC researcher’s work on Yellowhammers suggests tackling the decline in farmland birds need not always require large budgets.

On one Ayrshire dairy farm a low cost supplementary feeding programme raised yellowhammer numbers from seven to over one hundred in a season.  It has led some ecologists to ask if the conservation options in Scotland’s Rural Development Programme are unnecessarily over-complicated and costly.

Dawn Thomson is a joint Glasgow University and SAC research student who has been studying Yellowhammers, a red-list songbird of conservation concern. She has been working in SW Scotland on a joint Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, SAC, University of Glasgow and SNH project.

Local dairy farms no longer grow the feed grain crops they once did, favouring instead intensive grassland management. This has led to a real decline in populations of birds like yellowhammers which relied on what the autumn stubbles offered them. They have found it particularly difficult in the so-called “hungry gap” months of winter and early spring. Only where there were alternatives like field and road-side margins, weedy patches,  or crops sown specifically for game birds and game bird feeders have they survived.

By radio tagging selected birds Dawn found that in the early autumn birds were prepared to fly as far as 7 Km between suitable food sources. By early spring movements were down to just 2 Km as birds stayed close to the limited food remaining. In another experiment on one farm she maintained trays of feed (wheat seeds) from October 2010 to April 2011. In the previous winter just 5 yellowhammers had been seen on the farm. Following the regular feeding over 100 birds were caught for ringing and up to 45 were seen at one time at a single feeder.

According to Dawn Thomson’s co-supervisor, Dr Dave Parish the GWCT’s lowland ecologist;

“The provision of food in this way was relatively cheap and easy compared to alternative approaches like sowing seed-bearing crops, and would seem to be a sensible addition to the Scotland Rural Development Programme which supports farmers trying to manage their land in a more wildlife-friendly manner”.

Note

Dawn Thomson is based on the Auchincruive Estate at Ayr where SAC maintains Research and Consultancy staff. This includes specialists in Resource Economics and Biodiversity and an SAC Veterinary Services Investigation Centre which has a special interest in diseases of farmland and garden birds.

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