The influence of wild bird seed mixture spatial distribution at the landscape scale on conservation potential to farmland birds in summer and winter.

Abstract

Wild bird seed mixtures and crops planted as game cover can provide sources of seed food in winter and insect food in summer for farmland birds and are widely adopted within Environmental Stewardship and on farm shoots. We used GIS to explore the potential benefits of these crops to birds, based on their actual distribution in the upper Eye Brook catchment (Leicestershire), and on empirically derived foraging ranges. The crops provide good coverage for wintering birds but coverage is localised for breeding birds. This approach to spatial planning of this habitat could be adopted more widely.