As climate warms, more bird nests are destroyed in farmlands

A new study shows that birds have shifted the time of their breeding much more quickly than Finnish farmers are anticipating their sowing times. This means that more birds are laying their eggs on fields that are still to be sown, a mismatch in timing that is most likely fatal for the bird nests.

"As the eggs of Curlew and Lapwings are placed on unsown fields, they are likely to be run over by farming machinery during sowing operations even if farmers were willing to avoid nest destructions," says researcher Andrea Santangeli from Finnish Museum of Natural History, part of the University of Helsinki.

Modern agriculture is catastrophic for farmland wildlife

The rush to produce more food to feed an ever-increasing society has led to unprecedented transformations in farmland over the past 50 years. The challenge of increasing crop yields was met by making extensive use of chemicals, like pesticides and herbicides to remove pests and weeds, and by making fields larger and homogeneous.

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CONSERVATION : Corn buntings saved by farmers

February 2014: Numbers of Corn buntings could increase if there is a change in farming methods say RSPB Scotland. Corn buntings used to be widespread throughout Europe, but are now one of the fastest declining farmland birds with just 800 singing males left in Scotland.

Most commonly associated with cereal cultivation, corn buntings would once have bred in hay meadows too, however intensification of farming, particularly a move to earlier mowing, has made this impossible across large parts of northwest Europe.

In northeast Scotland, silage and hay cuts remain late enough for birds to make nests in these fields. In fact, over the five year study, more than half of the nests started in May and June were in hay meadows. Sadly, more than two-thirds of these were then lost during June and July mowing.

Therefore RSPB organised a trial wherel19 farms across Aberdeenshire and Inverness-shire delayed their mowing until august 1. This delay made huge changes as less than five per cent of nests in meadows were lost, and overall breeding success increased by 20 per cent.

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UK: Special farm wildlife scheme beats organic at boosting birds

Threatened farmland birds are likely to survive the winter better on conventional farms with specially designed wildlife habitats than on organic farms without according to a new study from the University of Southampton.

Winter farmland bird populations compared across three different wildlife schemes showed the ‘Conservation Grade’ approach, that aims to grow crops efficiently while requiring farmers to establish and manage specific habitats for wildlife, produced higher survival rates than the organic sites.

The researcher, Dominic Harrison, said the greatest numbers of chaffinches, skylarks, yellowhammers and lapwings were recorded on Conservation Grade farms.

“A strong link was found between the number of specially-designed habitats created and the richness of bird species found,” he said.

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Birdwatch News Archive South-East farms are essential to wildlife

The thirteenth annual RSPB Volunteer and Farmer Alliance survey has shown an overall success story for farmland conservation in South-East England.

A record 121 volunteers surveyed 6,924 ha of farmland across 92 different sites, bringing the total surveyed across the region to an amazing 51,690 ha of farmland since 2000. The free surveys help farmers to identify birds of conservation concern present on their land; the RSPB then advises them on how to help these species and make the most of their farms for wildlife.

Kate Faulkner, whose farm in Alton, Hampshire, was surveyed this summer, said: “The survey was very useful. We are in the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme (HLS) and were aware that we have breeding populations of Yellowhammer and Northern Lapwing, among other species. The survey indicated larger populations of birds when compared to the 2008 survey that was carried out. This suggests that the hedgerow management options and planting of wild bird mix plots that we have been undertaking is benefiting the birds on our farm.”

In the South-East, over 50 per cent of the landscape is farmland, which is of fundamental importance in providing feeding and breeding habitat for birds and other wildlife. Indeed, many species such as Northern Lapwing, Skylark and Yellowhammer, have now adapted to live on it. Unfortunately, however, many farmland birds have declined significantly over the last 40 years and are now of major conservation concern. This is largely the result of changes in British farming practice during the post-war era, when food production has been of key importance.

Farming policies encouraged this, often at the expense of wildlife. These dictated how farmers ran their businesses and managed their land, and failed to fully reward the vital conservation role they have in managing the land on which many species rely. In more recent years many farmers have worked to encourage and conserve wildlife on their land, often at their own expense, and many wildlife-friendly farmers go to considerable lengths to integrate conservation measures into their farms. In Britain, approximately 75 per cent of farmers are now in a wildlife stewardship scheme.

Continued:  http://www.birdwatch.co.uk/channel/newsitem.asp?c=11&cate=__13275