I wrote a little about skylarks here recently – and how numbers had quadrupled at the RSPB’s Hope Farm over the last 12 years, increasing from 10 pairs in 2000 to the low 40s in recent years).
The story of how skylarks increased is quite well known – it’s done by leaving small bare patches of land in winter wheat fields – skylark patches.
The efficacy of this method was tested in a large research project many years ago and the science persuaded government to allow skylark patches to be an option in the Entry Level Stewardship scheme open to all farmers in England. As I travel the country I keep an eye open for skylark patches, and I do occasionally see them from a train or in a Cotswold field as I travel to the races at Cheltenham, but they seem about as rare as breeding lapwings in southern England.
This is disappointing as skylark patches work and farmers can get paid for them! It’s not as though they are a secret – the Hope Farm report has a photo of Chris Bailey (a former farm manager of Hope Farm), myself and NFU President Peter Kendall standing in a skylark patch at Hope Farm with Peter’s arms crossed across his chest looking as though he wasn’t really listening. I wonder whether Peter has yet got round to putting a few skylark patches in his own hectares of wheat? He certainly hasn’t been seen or heard actively promoting them to his fellow arable farmers very much.
I was interested in some of the details on skylark patches in the Hope Farm report. An analysis by Smiths Gore and the RSPB of the economics of skylark patches is informative. The gross margin (income minus variable costs) of 100 skylark patches is £441 if they are produced by simply not drilling the small areas with wheat – obviously that’s about £4 per patch. If you choose to produce the same number of patches by spraying them out (with herbicide) later in the year it’s more work and your gross margin falls to £283 but clearly you are still in profit. How does this compare with not doing any of that and just sowing a little more wheat? The gross margin for not bothering is £167. In other words, you make more money by saving skylarks on a tiny part of your cropped area than you do by growing food. Why don’t more farmers do this?
There are probably many reasons why few farmers have adopted skylark plots or patches but you’d have to say that between them the RSPB and Defra have removed most of the good reasons for not bothering. They are proved to work and they are proved to be profitable – what’s not to like?
I think that one psychological problem is that they look as though they occupy more of the field than they actually do! When I saw in the Hope Farm report that 100 skylark patches occupy just 0.16ha I looked at that figure and wondered whether it was right. So each patch is 0.0016ha? That seems tiny – and it is, but it is right.
Each skylark patch is about four metres, squared. And a hectare, for those who may still be trapped in imperial units, is 1oom, squared. So a skylark patch is 1/25th times 1/25th of a hectare which is about 1/600th which is indeed 0.0016ha. A tiny area, for which you get paid more than wheat and you deliver more skylarks to the world too.
Let’s have some more please.
And don’t you just love the design of this Hope Farm mug by Mary Barnaville from The Howard of Effingham School in Surrey? Mary won a Wildlife Explorers competition to design the new Hope Farm mug.
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I have noticed an increase in ‘spaces’ in crops in my area. I hope they are for skylarks and presume they are, as they are quite regular gaps. These are in an area which is now part of the Marlborough Downs NIA. I hope that, having seen public money given to NIAs, the results of the schemes are publicised and I will then know.
The figures do indeed speak for themselves – there really is no good reason for not including skylark patches in winter cereal crops. One reason perhaps is one of professional pride – farmers like to look at a good strong even crop and bare patches go against their instincts of good crop husbandry. It is no doubt hard to change a lifetime’s ingrained belief in what constitutes good farming. This makes me wonder to what extent the RSPB or others have been able to get involved with agricultural colleges as a long term strategy for winning over the hearts and minds of the young generation entering the faming profession?
And when the grants dry up what then? We are back to square one. Hardly a long term sustainable solution, in fact a bit like set aside. What is needed are more nature reserves or farms owned by conservation bodies where long term habitat suitable for skylarks or waders can be established.
David – I think we do need more of what you say but it’s hardly sustainable either! Making the vast areas of arable farming just a little more wildlife-friendly would have a big impact overall.
Hi Mark,good points from Jonathon and it is disappointing more arable farmers do not do these patches,one thing is I think it is simply quite often contractors do the work and whether they or the farm workers do the drilling it is easier to drill the whole field than put the drill out and then back in after 4 metres,pretty sad really.
Martin Harper gave yourself and your book a great write up on his blog so look forward to getting it after August 1st I guess,thank you for the discount.
Dennis – with modern machinery you can miss out a skylark patch worth of drilling with the flick of your fingr in the cab without slowing down (I am told).
Martin was very kind about Fighting for Birds on his blog today.
Plenty of skylarks around earlier in the year in south Wilts, according to Mrs C. Shallow soils over chalk plus dry autumn weather often results in large gaps in oilseed rape drillings. There’s the answer. No human intervention, just crop failure.
This begs a question – do birds have a system of communication beyond our knowledge? We don’t see or hear a jay until there nestlings in our beech hedge, ivy on the leccy pole, or tucked up on a beam on the house. If we put peanuts in a feeder, how do the GSWs get to know so quickly? How do goldfinches know when there are niger seeds on offer, when they don’t visit the feeder until there are? These are not food plants which are grown here, so how do they know? If skylarks are so rare, how do they manage to find the rare gaps in crops which do exist? Do they have access to the RPA website? Twitter?
I had always assumed birds’ visual accuity was the answer, but great tits, swallows and the blue tit which perched on my head in the kitchen this morning, while I was opening the window to let it out, can catch insects too small for me to see but can’t find their way out through an open door or window. Perhaps it’s all relative – explaining why a skylark can’t find a piece of bare ground unless it’s at least 16,000,000mm2
Farmers in Sweden have only recently started to introduce skylark plots, which I find surprising since, as you say, they were introduced in the UK many years ago.
John – welcome, and thank you for that information
Why do more farmers not include Skylark plot in their ELS agreements ?
It is certainly not for financial reasons, as at the the equivalent of 3125 pts/ha skylark plots score over 5 times the number of points for beetle banks which is second highest scoring ELS option. And they are not a difficult option to manage, as you have pointed out Mark, a skylark plot can be created at the flick of a switch.
But then again, there is more to farming than economics and Jonathan Wallace’s comments ring true. I know from my own experience that to many farmers the sight of an undrilled bare patch in the middle of a cereal field is a serious affront to their ingrained farming sensibilities. More resources should be ploughed (forgive the pun) into the environmental education of young farmers. I would be more than happy to see a bigger proportion of the tax-payer funded ERDP diverted into this area.
In the meantime before, I see no reason why the creation of a certain number of skylark plots in winter cereal fields over 20 ha in size, should not become a compulsary Cross Compliance requirement on large arable farms.
Joe – many thanks. I can’t see why skylark patches shouldn’t be compulsory in winter wheat either.
Hi mark, I work as an HLS adviser and since reading this blog I have tried using the financial arguments to push for skylark plots a couple of times so far. A farmer last week was very amenable and happily added the plots to his agreement. But the other proved much more difficult to persuade- his concern was that he couldn’t trust his contractors to create an agreed number of plots, and if he was inspected and found to be a few plots short he might be subject to fines. And despite the area of the plots potentially being worth twice as much to him as the equivalent area of crop, the £100 per year he would have got for 20 plots was not worth the hassle and risk, especially as it would represent only a very small fraction of the overall value of his agreement. So I agree with Dennis above that a reliance on contractors can be a barrier. Perhaps contractors should be targeted for free els/hls training!