Declining Song birds..Farming practises (1 Viewer)

A few quick points about farming and conservation:

1. A lot of conservation measures appear to farmers to be a constraint on production. Most farmers were brought up to produce food (not just quantity but quality as well) so any constraint on this can seem to them to go against the grain (plus most farmers like to be their own boss - often the only reason some stay in it these days). Therefore any conservation involvement in farming should bear these values in mind.
2. It should be remembered that even though a lot of measures for conservation-friendly farming involve the sorts of practices that farmers used to do, this doesn't mean that previous generations of farmers who used to carry out these 'traditional practices' actually wanted to do it that way. Farmers have long been brought up to produce food and so if you say to modern farmers "By using fewer pesticides, you'll be farming just like your ancestors did" then I think a lot of farmers would respond that their ancestors only farmed like that because it wasn't possible to farm more intensively. In other words, farming has changed a lot but the values of farmers aren't necessarily that different to how they have long been.
3. To fit in with these productive values, it has been advocated that farmers be subsidised to 'produce' wildlife and habitats in the same way that they produce livestock and crops. In other words, the government (or whoever) says "We'll pay you x pounds for every pair of Corn Buntings etc." The farmer then uses his knowledge and skills to earn money by producing this wildlife and integrates the production of wildlife habitat into the economics of his farm. The farmer still has a choice over how he uses his land but there is an economic return if he chooses to farm wildlife (as opposed to a constraint on his production of food in order to force him to tolerate wildlife). I'm not sure if this sort of scheme is operating yet in the UK but I think it has been tried elsewhere (with positive results). I'd be interested in knowing more about this and about how farming and wildlife conservation are integrated in other parts of the world.

Have a look at www.vinehousefarmbirdfoods.co.uk

I see your point, but what I am getting at is that some of these insects rely on the crops themselves to survive, the crops are part of their ecosystem as much as the insects are part of the birds' ecosystem. If we stop the 'pests' from attacking crops altogether, we may also starve a good deal of the insect that rely on them.

rogerk..I would suspect that any insects reliant on crops are well doused with pesticides several times in the crop's life-cycle..

capitalism is the root of all evil........

that's why the farmers do what they do

that's why the supermarkets do what they do

guess what we've gotta change.....

I find it perverse that if you go to a supermarket and attempt to buy organic food, 9 times out of 10 it has been imported. Of course the average supermarket trolley has travelled 50,000 miles!

Jane Turner said:

There are a few threads at the moment on this subject blaming raptors/mapies/cats/spanish hunters for declines in songbirds. To me all of the significant blame can be laid at our door. Its the overuse of persticides/herbicides.... mono-culture hedgerowless drive towards intensive agriculture that has tipped the balance.

Spain has hunters...it also has the healthiest populations of raptors and songbirds in Europe....along with some of the more primitiae farming practices.

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Sadly, as with Portugal and Greece - and God forbid now, the many new Eastern European countries joining, the EC will probably give farmers every reason (i.e. cash) to replicate the same ecologically disastrous farming methods that have led to this sorry tragedy in our own country.

Leicestershire is a typical case - intensively farmed, heavily sprayed, monoculture everywhere. It's ironic that the only natural areas of interest now are either nature reserves, gravel pits, reservoirs or ... fox / pheasant hunted land.

In my lifetime, I have seen farm animal numbers plummet with a drop in the meadowland they required and the insect populations they maintained. All so sad. Those buzzing gnats and flies and cow pats might have got on our nerves a bit on our country jaunts as kids but oh! I wish now for their return along with the stubble fields of old.

It's all so terribly sad that we have ever allowed this rape of the countryside to happen under our eyes but were it to be replicated now in, say, Poland, well...

steviewol said:

WHY ? on Earth are some Birders SO TWiSTY & MiSERABLE.......

The whole 'concept' of what constitutes 'farming' in the UK is starting to change & the future looks brighter to those who have an open mind.........

The thing is, even if 'we' de-mechanised every farm in the land & brought back the 'good old ways' then some birder somewhere would be bleating on about something.....

Isn't it just "We're Never Satisfied"..?

I think we're lucky we have any countryside left in UK given our 100's of years of 'progress'.

Luckily some people have their eye on the bigger picture.


S

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Steviewol, I am an interloper here coming fron the far side of the planet, but I agree with you in some ways, especially about the English Countryside having been preserved so that at least THERE IS SOME ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE. I am always amazed when I visit that everything looks the same as it did a few years ago. I know that the hedges have been eliminated and there are hundreds of acres of monoculture but at least the urban sprawl is kept in check and the lovely 'tourist attracting' villages are still the same. Here in Australia the Melbourn region is as large as Outer London with only a minute percentage of the population and spreading out of control taking up rich agricultural land for urban housing.
I usually visit the south of England (where the rellies are) but noticed on my last vist when I 'went North' that there is not so much monoculture. Is this why there are far more birds 'Up North'?

scampo said:

Sadly, as with Portugal and Greece - and God forbid now, the many new Eastern European countries joining, the EC will probably give farmers every reason (i.e. cash) to replicate the same ecologically disastrous farming methods that have led to this sorry tragedy in our own country.

Leicestershire is a typical case - intensively farmed, heavily sprayed, monoculture everywhere. It's ironic that the only natural areas of interest now are either nature reserves, gravel pits, reservoirs or ... fox / pheasant hunted land.

In my lifetime, I have seen farm animal numbers plummet with a drop in the meadowland they required and the insect populations they maintained. All so sad. Those buzzing gnats and flies and cow pats might have got on our nerves a bit on our country jaunts as kids but oh! I wish now for their return along with the stubble fields of old.

It's all so terribly sad that we have ever allowed this rape of the countryside to happen under our eyes but were it to be replicated now in, say, Poland, well...

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I wish you were wrong Steve but as you say changing agricultural practice in Iberia & Eastern Europe is starting to produce the changes we all fear.
Those who have repeatedly visited Extremadura will have seen a decline in the birding productivity of La Serena as a prime steppe habitat.One of the biggest problems is spraying with pesticides to limit the locust & hopper populations. This has reduced numbers of Bustard, Rollers & smaller raptors. While attempts to grow cash crops under plastic in the south of Spain has produced huge unsightly sprawls of plastic greenhouses & "tons" of windblown polyethene litter-all so we can have strawberries at xmas!! - These thirsty crops have to be supplied from groundwater thus reducing the water-table & parching the land further.As ground supplies dry up thirsty eyes are staring north > ill-conceived plans to irrigate large parts of S.E Spain from water stolen from the Rio Ebro are now on the verge of being implemented. None of these large projects can proceed without the support of EU capital. Now that Eastern Europe is joining the EU (& about time too) we need to pressurise Brussels into change before its too late.

It's truly good to know you feel so positive about England, Nancy. We had a visitor from your country at the end of last year, and he made similar comments.

Sad to say that I fear both of you are suffering a touch of what I call "grandparents" syndrome (nothing to do with age!). When grannie comes to visit her darling grandchildren, she always leaves thinking of them as little angels; but the parents, who live with the little devils all the time, no a little different!

(-:

Same with your and our friend's visits, I think. You are perhaps only visiting the pearls that still exist - perhaps our tourist areas? Sadly, many of your comments simply do not bear close investigation - urban sprawl, monoculture, loss of hedgerows, meadows, grazing land, winter stubble fields, loss of diverstiy... all are very apparent to those who live in or near to the English countryside and the effect on avifauna populations is, in some cases, dramatic.

Also "Steviewol"... although I fear from your tone that nothing either I or anyone else can say to you will ever convince you of the facts concerning the woes of the English countryside, fortunately the majority of us do realise that views such as those you put forward are quite unsubstantiable and, thankfully, held by an increasingly small minority.

Steve G said:

... we need to pressurise Brussels into change before its too late.

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It is beyond sadness - we live in what is called an advanced democracy, but the reality is very different; power is held not by the voting public, but by a very few, and although freely elected, our governments act as one in most cases - for those with powerful voices and lobbying ability. The voice of the people is rarely heard - or is most often ignored - by those in power. The march of what is increasingly seeming to be almost unbridled capitalism is becoming a frightening prospect.

It's quite long but despite its powerful ironic political undertones, is an apt and beautiful poem, Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind":

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O Thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and fill:

Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Though Dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of the thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision: I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

scampo said:

SNIP
Also "Steviewol"... although I fear from your tone that nothing either I or anyone else can say to you will ever convince you of the facts concerning the woes of the English countryside, fortunately the majority of us do realise that views such as those you put forward are quite unsubstantiable and, thankfully, held by an increasingly small minority.

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If you are referring to post 15, I think that the point he is trying to make is that, in some areas, schemes are underway to try to reverse some of the damage done in recent decades. These are to be applauded and supported.

If each 'county' in the U.K. could emulate the apparent success of the Cirl Bunting project in South Hams, Devon, we may be able to hang on to our declining species a little longer.

Industrialists could be asked to put more money into the conservation coffers; 'beetle banks' to become compulsory in arable fields over a certain acreage......

We are quick to criticise, let's try to be constructive too.

Andy.

satrow said:

If you are referring to post 15, I think that the point he is trying to make is that, in some areas, schemes are underway to try to reverse some of the damage done in recent decades. These are to be applauded and supported.

If each 'county' in the U.K. could emulate the apparent success of the Cirl Bunting project in South Hams, Devon, we may be able to hang on to our declining species a little longer.

Industrialists could be asked to put more money into the conservation coffers; 'beetle banks' to become compulsory in arable fields over a certain acreage......

We are quick to criticise, let's try to be constructive too.

Andy.

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I wholeheartedly agree, even us dour Scots are not without some optimism. After all the Eagle of the Sea again flies over the Minch.

satrow said:

We are quick to criticise, let's try to be constructive too.

Andy.

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A touch cheeky, patronising and presumptious, doncha think young Andrew? Apart from being critical, how can you know what else I and others do concerning conservation?

And as far as:

"Industrialists could be asked to put more money into the conservation coffers..."

Should we perhaps be on bended knee when we ask?

Come on now. I have seen big business at very close quarters indeed and, by the early nineties, I didn't like what I was seeing.

Wise words Scampo - yours I mean, not that poet bloke!

but ask?
it should be TAKEN at source as a tax. The Polluter Pays

You should see how Late Capitalism (as the clever bods call it) is decimating the third world. Just go to Mexico, Indonesia or Bolivia/Peru etc and see how people are being forced to live by our corporations. People in these countries don't want to destroy their habitats but we give them little choice.....and the numbers of birds being endangered is frightening. As Steve says it seems almost out of control (something Karl Marx said would happen - but what did he know!).

The true value of something is not the same as its price

If u want to do something, join the regional bird clubs, write to the governments expressing your concern (easy via email - just copy your message!)

Interesting article:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,9061,1128530,00.html

Judging by their personal profiles, many of the contributors to this thread were born long after farming was carried out on a seasonal basis, rather than at the dictates of an accountant's balance sheet as it is today. Sadly they will have no personal knowledge of crops being cut and lifted by hand, horse-drawn implements, or early tractors such as the Fordson Major or the Ferguson. The latter was always referred to as 'The Little Grey Fergie', which almost single-handedly heralded the arrival of farming's modern mechanical age.

Pure nostalgia? Possibly, but in those days farming was labour intensive and one man with a horse-drawn plough could only manage to plough just one acre in a day - provided he kept at it of course - walking some 11 miles (I think) in the process. Now there is no such thing as a farm labourer, only highly skilled machine operators, where one man with his modern equipment now does the same amount of work of 20 men - or even more in some cases! And with a five furrow reversible plough, even five acres in 1 hour is possible.

So when today's youngsters trot out the usual same old rubbish about 'changing farming practices' and 'pesticides', I can't help wondering if they have any idea what they are really talking about. In my opinion, they have lost the ability to reason or even think for themselves - what I would describe as their 'enquiring mind' - and to question the lop-sided theories so often 'sold' to them as fact. They are victims of the 'Mushroom System', where they are kept in the dark and fed pure unadulterated 'muck' at regular intervals.

Here in the UK, loss of habitat is frequently blamed as one of, if not THE, prime reason for the decline in songbird numbers. In other words, the finger is being unfairly pointed at those 'Wicked Farmers' once again. But are they to blame? Somehow I think not. Just consider the following for a moment;

Loss of habitat included:-

Removal of hedgrows

Major reduction of permanent pasture in arable areas

Reclamation of 'redundant' and marsh land

Increases in the proportion of winter crops (sown in the autumn)

Intensification of livestock production.

BUT in the last 10 years farmland habitat has improved. For example:


New hedges, totalling 40,000km (24,800 miles) planted (Farmers spend £16m per annum maintaining them)

Woodland cover now 100% greater than in 1920 (5% more than in 1990 since when farmers have planted more than 87 million trees)

Uptake of LEAF practices (Linking Environment And Farming)

Arable land (minimum 10%) in set-a-side

Organic conversion

Country Stewardship and other schemes totalling over one million hectares (2.47 million acres) and increasing

13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) of cereal field margins in positive wildlife friendly management, ie they are richer in plant species than previously.

Yet despite all this, and the best efforts of the UK's self-appointed bird protection agencies, the population of songbirds continues to decline.

By the way, the source of the facts and other statistical information I have quoted here is taken from the website of SongBird Survival - the organisation vilified in several of the early postings on the Birdforum 'Sparrowhawk' thread recently, and even dismissed by one person as (quote) 'A bunch of rednecks.' The site covers a wide-ranging number of predation-related issues (NOT just Sparrowhawks!) and I can't help thinking that the author of this stupid remark will live to regret making it!

Anthony

Sadly all of the problems that have been raised on this thread exist here in Canada as well.
One problem that I see is that farmers here are trying to survive in a global market place, farmers here are forced to compete with the heavily subsidized farmers in some other countries, including some who deny that their farmers are subsidized. The result is that our farmers try to become more and more "efficient" - bigger fields, bigger equipment, less crop rotation.
etc.
Here where I live, our island is often referred to as the "Million Acre Farm" because pretty much everything is agriculture (the only other significant industries are fishing and tourism). Very little manufacturing.
Things have been going downhill for quite a while from an environmental point of view. Government has been forced to pass legislation forcing livestock be fenced away from all water courses, compulsory three year crop rotation, buffer zones to reduce chemical runoff particularly on sloping ground.
Just recently a proposal was brought to government that the province become completely GMO free. The Premier said that that he thought it might be a good idea. That's when the sh*t hit the fan. Lots of supporters on both sides of that arguement. It will be intersting to see how that one plays out.
As for GMO pest control, I know that a couple of years back, tests were being done here on Potato Beetle repellent potato plants. Repellent may be too strong a description, I think that the plants were simply not attractive to the beetles. The way the plants were being used was to plant the outside rows of the potato fields with the GMO potatoes and the theory was that the beetles would start enter the ield, hit these plants and go somewhere else. i talked to the scientist running the tests and he said that they were very successful but then the whole project seemed to disppear.

Anthony Morton said:

I can't help thinking that the author of this stupid remark will live to regret making it!

Anthony

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I don't know anything about that remark, but issuing what sounds rather like a threat is a surpisingly immature response, Anthony - or have I misunderstood your tone?

You should come up to Leicestershire and have a look at our well-farmed county. No one here is "blaming" farmers per se but come along with me to, let's say, Garendon Park where I grew up and we can discuss what might have led to the disappearance of such as snipe, woodcock, grey partridges, yellow wagtails, lapwing, tree sparrows, little and barn owls, golden plover, hares, cowslips, violets, marsh marigolds, ragged robin, ladysmocks, ...

You speak with such conviction, yet your rhetoric and condescending tone betray you.

I don't much care for the tone of some of the above posts. The people writing them are not coming out of it looking a) intelligent b) reasoned and c) nice people in general. I'm sure that is not their aim though.........