Blogs

Earlier today (3 February), in a House of Lords debate on bird control licences, the discussion turned quickly to game management.

With the merlin gone for the winter, we have been busy in the uplands taking field measurements to understand what makes habitats suitable for nesting merlin. As merlin are specially protected, it is important that they are not disturbed while they are breeding, so we collect these measurements after the breeding season ends.

It is concerning to see the rise in wheat prices hitting shoots in the pocket, but it is important that we don’t let it impact farmland birds.

World Wetlands Day on the 2nd of February each year aims to raise awareness about wetlands; it also marks the anniversary of the Convention on Wetlands, an international treaty signed in 1971. The themes of this year’s awareness day are “Value”, “Manage” and “Restore”.

The GWCT’s Big Farmland Bird Count (BFBC) is pleased to announce a FREE collaborative online webinar on the 9th of February at 7pm to help record what farm birds are present at this time of year during the official count from February 4th - 20th. You can register for the FREE webinar here.

As farmers across the country focus their attention on the Big Farmland Bird Count it’s time to reflect on how songbird numbers on our own farm have changed since the Allerton Project started thirty years ago.

The capercaillie is a truly magnificent species, one that almost seems too significant and primeval to occur in the small remaining pockets of Caledonian pine forests in the 21st century. The small, declining population of this species is now centred in Strathspey, with fewer individuals occurring in Deeside and Easter Ross. This, sadly, makes observing capercaillie particularly rare in Scotland.

"I’d like to think that most game managers are conservationists at heart, and I’m certainly only doing my advisory service job after 40 years with the GWCT because I believe in the conservation spin off from the help that I give"

We are once again joining forces with the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) to showcase the important role farmers play when it comes to looking after farmland birds.

Farmer clusters in the Avon Valley and encircling Martin Down have put farmers at the heart of conservation and the results are there for all to see.