The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Unusually large flock of 110 Skylarks on arable land adjacent to the Caistor High Street at North Willingham this lunchtime.

as all farmers appear to be in the throws of suddenly seeing that there is lots of cash to be made from winter wheat, certainly up here fields which have not been ploughed for 15 years are now under winter sown wheat and all the set-aside on which the Skylarks used to spend the winter has of course also gone in the interest of fuelling the American economy so it may be no surprise that Skylarks are having to flock to whatever bits of winter feeding they can find before their breeding numbers fall by another 70% in the next 5 years. An excellent enditement of the UK Government's quality of life indicator.

I feel an expletive or three coming on.



Adi

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/46984194@N00/

The situatiuon will probably get worse as well when the 'Bio-fuel' plants planned for N. E. Lincolnshire in the next couple of years come on-stream and are looking for large amounts of wheat to power them.

Another large flock (50+) at Stainton-le-Vale today. They were on rape sown directly on stubble which is quit a common practice. It provides winter habitat before the rape gets too high in spring. It's not all gloom and doom in this predominantly agricultural county, Graham.

Had this conversation at Alkborough Flats with Graham at the weekend. Am in total agreement. The growing of bio-fuels and the worldwide production of wheat will see all set-a-side schemes in Lincolnshire defaulted on. Winter stubble specialists such as reed bunting, corn bunting, yellow hammer, skylark will decline as Graham explained.
Just as a point - 75 hectares of intertidal mud flat on Alkborough Flats are now in the production of wheat, irrelevant of the fact that salt ingress will kill the wheatgerm.

The flock at North Willingham was down to 76 today.

I take it this is because of some subsidies making it worthwhile to grow a sacrificial crop? Or is this just a technicality and there is in fact no wheat?