CONSERVATION SUCCESSES LAPWING These birds have adopted the Stone Culew plot - perhaps not surprisingly - and two or three pairs nest each year. Fledging success is questionable in most years due to pressures from crows and mammals such as foxes and badgers which prey on ground nesting birds. Though 2012 was simply washed out. However some years, juvenile birds can be seen nearby post fledging, indicating breeding success. Lapwing displaying Lapwing made a reappearance at the time we entered Coutryside Sewardship, with 3 two hectare plots of bare land plus the Stone Curlew plot. I eventually amalgamated the plots into one and this together with the growing of linseed for a few years provided bare ground in the spring to be sufficiently attractive to the initial failed breeders looking for a new site. This resulted in Lapwing breeding after over 30 years of absence in the arable fields. In this time they have also made use of pea ground on ours and our neighbours land. CORN BUNTING Also known as the barley bird, this bird also disappeared from its arable haunts, though this time a little later, in the mid eighties. The stone curlew plot is now adjacent to arable reversal grassland, as well as an arable field. The first time these birds tried to nest was after the second of the two reversal patches was growing in its first season. In 2012 there were two possibly three pairs in this downland location, as well as a male singing by the margin of a lower field below. Males are back on territory early in the year and can be heard singing from February onwards. The females probably don’t join them until April

Corn Bunting singing