Shooting Wildlife

Over the last couple of days I have carrying my camera around to try and capture some of the wildlife that I am seeing around the farm at the moment. This lovely spell of warm weather is really bringing the wildlife out to enjoy it as much as I am. The picture (above) about shows 7 Brown Hares (BAP Species) adults and young all enjoying the morning sunshine on a recently mowed pollen and nectar mix. The area measures 0.70 Ha and is really crammed with wildlife. The hares were enjoying the shelter of the Oilseed Rape should any predators pass by.

Up on the top of Bredon Hill our resident herd of Fallow Deer are also basking in the sunshine. These are young males that gather together at this time of year. This field hasn't been planted yet as it is part of the hand picked peas operation and will be planted in June.

This little guy was probably the best find of the day (and his 3 other siblings). The Lapwing parents were getting very cross with me as I sneaked up to take the picture of a young Lapwing chick foraging for insects in a flooded part of a wheat field. It's an area of very poor drainage and under the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme I have plans to put a pond here but I might just excavate the scrape more to provide lots of wet feeding grounds for the next generations of lapwings.

Worms Eye View

With the dry spell of weather over the past few weeks, the land has been drying out which has allowed us to get onto the fields and start working on our spring campaign.  We have started ploughing some of the light land inpreparation for planting salad onions in about 4 weeks time.  Ploughing now should allow a nice germination of weeds before the onions are planted, reducing the cost of weed killers (herbicides) and actually being able to control some certain weeds, like groudsel.

Derek was ploughing in this field, Lynch Piece, and was almost immediately joined by about 50 lapwings looking for all the tasty worms and insects that were being turned onto the surface.  A tasty snack, unless you are the worm!

Seed Selection

Today Paul Gillet and I went to see some game cover and stewardship seed mixtures sold by David Bright Seeds  Paul is the Head Keeper at Overbury and together we wanted to go down and have a look at different mixes of seed after the hard winter weather we have been having.  This would help us determine if there are any new varieties or species we should be trying that will stand up better to the cold weather.

Much of the grain maize was still standing, as was the cobless maize but much of the forage maize was flat.  We looked at varieties of sorghum, millet (red and white), kale, mustard, turnips and a host of other species of planted, all designed to either feed or provide cover (shelter) for game birds, with benefits to other species.

Having just been accepted into the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme, I was keen to look at different seed mixtures aimed at providing feed and cover for our 6 target wild birds (Grey Partridge, Lapwing, Turtle-dove, Skylark, Yellow Wagtail and Trees sparrow).  We saw mixes for yellow hammer and tree sparrow, both of which we have tried here at Overbury, containing mustard, mixed millet, spring wheat, spring barley and fodder raddish.  Lots to think about and plan for ready for planting this spring.

Arable Bird Survey

Today I went out on our arable bird survey walk around with John Clarke and his wife Pamela. The walk takes us to 3 areas of the farm, that we walk through about 3 times a year to see what bird species we are able to identify. We are specifically looking for farmland bird species including; skylark, lapwing, yellow hammer, turtle dove, but all species of note are recorded. Today we spotted; skylark, lapwing, reed warblers, black caps, sedge warblers, reed buntings, yellow hammers (on our cultivated margin- result) linnets and a few others. These records should help us in collating information to enhance our HLS (Higher Level Stewardship ) application at the end of May.

Today we had a brilliant find in one of the fields Pamela actually discovered a skylark nest which is amazing. I found one about 5 years ago and have waited to find another since then. We have always had skylark but locating the nests is very rare, so it was a complete joy to find one today and here it is for you to take a peak at. Here is a shot of a lapwing on patrol near a nest in one of the sites we manage specifically for this species, very rare in Worcestershire.

Lapwings Thriving

Derek spotted this lapwing nest whilst he was cultivating 'Sandpits' ready to plant stubble turnips for our summer sheep keep. Following our annual 'Arable Bird Survey' we counted 12 pairs of lapwing on the ground that we manage specifically for nesting Lapwing. This has been our highest count in 5 years. Lets hope with the correct 'predator' management, i.e. reducing carrion crows, magpies and other nest destroyers, these nests will yield healthy lapwing chicks!