Was it just me - maybe it was - but was Peter Kendall in a bit of a bad mood today?
Have a look at the Farmers Guardian debate and judge for yourself.
Peter seemed very keen to have a go at me and the RSPB whatever I said.
And how predictable to see NFU mouthpiece Guy Smith going back to criticising the FBI - there is precious little acceptance, by the NFU President or by Guy Smith, that there is a problem with farmland birds. The NFU's attitude to the environment may be summed up by Peter Kendall's phrase 'wrapping (farmers) in green tape'. Remember please, NFU, that's the taxpayers' money you get and so there do have to be some rules attached to it.
But very good to see lots of good comments - many I guess from farmers who are working closely with the RSPB in all sorts of ways.
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A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Look at Denmark mainly limited to spring crops. No attempt to increase wildlife but mass Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers, Skylarks and Linnets. Hedgerows managed for bees with lots of willow not hawthorn for early food. Subsides should only be paid to farmers that manage for Honey Bees then the rest will fall into place!!
Essex peasant, I am just about to start my eleventh year of farm surveys for the RSPB V&FA, offered to farmers who wish to see the effect their farming has on birds and to get advice, from the RSPB, on improving biodiversity. Most of the birds I find are the one's you catalogue above, although it seems very early to be seeing a Hobby. But, like you, I see very few Yellowhammers, Corn buntings, Linnets, Tree sparrows, Skylarks, Song thrushes and even Starlings. All these birds I think of as typical farmland birds, so where do you think they've gone?
essex peasant, roundup had just been introduced, so more fallows for couch and systemic fungicides were and short straw varieties were just coming in. We'd just realised it wasn't such a good idea to feed pigs antibiotics as a feed supplement because it could build immunity in human-crossover microbes. annual ryegrass really taking over from permanent semi-natural pasture. Thats about 1975.
It would be unfiar to go back to the completely unimproved medows you can still see in the safety zone around the MOD tank training area in Dorset, but then that is a completely different situation again.
Essex Peasant, I have tried to read the responses here with some degree of pragmatism but am having problems with some of your wording. I do actually pay my subscription to the RSPB and expect them to 'chunter' on about how they see wildlife issues. Magpies and Crows don't lurk around up to no good, they hang about and act like Magpies and Crows; who are we to decide what character we like or don't like in birds. Likewise I am sure that the swans and geese aren't deliberately feeding on the crops they are simply responding to available food.
I am impressed by the range of birds on your land and wish I could see all those in one walk around here. I know there are many good farmers about but there are also those who will struggle to respond to environmental issues. With regard to the hobby please report it as there are only 3 sightings on Bird Track and none in Essex so the local recorder will want to know. In this area the earliest I have seen them is towards the end of April.
The Cotswold Water park sightings website
My Flicker page
Nightjar - by what criteria do you measure intensification and what period are you talking about?
Gert - you do a lot of farmers and the NFU a grave injustice, the refusal of the conservation lobby to recognise the radical change in farmer attitude to conservation over the last generation simply demoralises the vanguard and encourages the laggards to stay laggards. The middlers remain unsure that if any of what they do is worthwhile because whatever they do do is dismissed as irrelevant.
EP
Paysan savant