Up and Runn........Walking

 We are so sorry for the lack of material over recent weeks. The lockdown conditions up until recently meant that we were strongly advised to only ring birds in our own gardens. For most of us that meant catching not very much if anything, although Pat out in Wales has had an exciting time because he has a good population of Siskin feeding in his garden and he has had quite a few potentially interesting controls of Siskins ringed elsewhere. I'll report on that when we have more details.

Since the ease of rules a little while ago, we have been able to respond to our good friend and farm manager Tim, who has recently been awarded Innovative Farmer of the Year on top of a previous Soil Farmer of the Year award. Tim is really keen on knowing how his 'no till' strategy is benefiting the birds and so he was really enthusiastic about us being able to survey his land-especially the area around a new winter feed 'spinner' mechanism:-

This mechanism enables us to stay away from the site for a few days as the hopper is filled with supplementary winter feed which the underlying mechanism spins periodically and sprays the seed out over a small area. It also has a solar panel to power the mechanism. The birds quickly get used to the undisturbed provision of lots of food!

The set up has been very successful in attracting farmland species and in just a small number of recent visits we have managed to ring a very significant 71 Yellowhammers!! This is around as many of this species as were ringed in many years in the whole of Staffordshire. It's great news that winter supplementary feeding stations like this and others are helping Yellowhammers survive over winter and we hope go on to breed in the area. Other interesting totals were 27 Linnet, 25 Chaffinch, 20 Goldfinch and 11 Reed Buntings.

A Yellowhammer

Many people know that feeding stations in their gardens also attract predators such as Sparrowhawks to the many small birds feeding there. It's no different to our farmland feeding stations where both Sparrowhawks and Kestrels have been seen. Our resident male Kestrel ( aka Kenny as we call him) got himself caught one morning:- 

He's a superb specimen and a very successful breeder having fledged 10 youngsters in the last 3 years on the farm, and we have already seen him 'food passing' to his mate  which is a sure sign that they are getting ready to rumble!! One of the reasons they are able to raise good sized broods is in great part due to the higher than average numbers of small mammals on the site--yet another benefit of the no till strategy. Every night when we survey the farm using the thermal imager it's really noticeable how many mice we see compared to the fields on nearby conventionally ploughed farms.