Theme 1: Life cycles

Stubble grassTo sustain bird life, a farm needs to have places for nesting, places to find food, and places for shelter. These need to be local. It is no good if the feeding areas are miles away from the nesting areas. Different birds have different needs, but if you cater for the gamebirds a whole range of others will benefit too.

If you are not in an existing Environmental Stewardship or your scheme is coming to an end, you might want to consider either establishing land management of new areas of the farm or retaining your stewardship options. If you were to do this you would be contributing towards the Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE). This is a partnership initiative supported by GWCT and full details can be found on the CFE website. CFE encourages farmers to manage uncropped land using Voluntary Measures (VMs) and these are referred to below

Partridges and pheasants nest on the ground so a dense ground cover of grass and perennials is what they want. The best way of providing this is by having a wide base to hedgerows and broad edges to woodlands. You should aim to give at least a one metre margin of perennial herbs and grass in addition to the required cross compliance margin.

If these are not wide enough to allow a thick ground flora to develop (as say next to a tall hedge or along the north side of a wood) then widen the area with a buffer strip. Additional nesting areas away from hedges and woods can be provided by beetle banks (VM18), taking field corners out of production (VM17) and sowing buffer strips on field boundaries (VM1). Don’t over-manage these areas.

On wide buffer strips, it is good to cut half annually but it is in uncut dead grass that partridges and other birds choose to nest. Next to these nesting areas there need to be habitats where a hen bird can take her brood after the chicks hatch.

Pheasant and partridge broods need to forage amongst the stems of tall plants where they can find insects, and where a canopy protects them from predators and weather. Thick grass doesn’t do this; it tends to leave the chicks wet, exposed and immobile. So next to the good nesting cover there needs to be foraging areas - conservation headlands and strips of wild bird seed mixture (VM6) are ideal.

After harvest and in winter, birds need cover and food. Brassica fodder crops (VM22) and overwinter stubbles (VM15) suit many species but specific wild bird seed mixtures are best.

Please refer to our pages on Countryside Stewardship for up-to-date information on the current agri-environment scheme in England.