Saturday 8 February 2014

Big Farmland Bird Count

It's been a farmland bird themed week for me at work this week. Firstly I was helping to lead a farmland bird workshop in southwest Cheshire with a couple of my colleagues and yesterday I took part in the Big Farmland Bird Count on behalf of one of my clients in Bowland.

My client has a 750 acre upland beef and sheep farm and operates 11 feeding stations on the farm and it was at one of these feeding stations that I did a count for him as part of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's 'Big Farmland Bird Count'. If you click on the above link you will see what it was all about.

This particular feeding station is located close to a stream with scrub and open Alder carr, surrounded by improved pasture. The weather was a bit mixed and during my half hour count the low cloud obscuring the fells deposited some wet stuff! I didn't see anything out of the ordinary and my half hour count included two Lesser Redpolls, eight Goldfinches, 20 Chaffinches, 49 Greenfinches, 91 Fieldfares and 40 Starlings. It will be interesting to see what the combined results show.

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