Birdwatch News Archive

Corn Bunting numbers have crashed in Scotland. Photo by Steve Riall (commons.wikimedia.org)

Urgent action is needed to save one of Scotland’s rarest birds

Birdwatch news team
Posted on: 04 Aug 2012

Corn Bunting is one of Scotland’s fastest-declining farmland birds, and new research has revealed that action is required now to save this beleaguered species, RSPB Scotland has said.

Once widespread across Britain, Corn Bunting is now rare in Scotland, with only 800 breeding pairs, confined to parts of the eastern lowlands and the Outer Hebrides. Over a 20 year period, an Aberdeenshire population of this multiple brooded, crop-nesting bird declined by 91 per cent from 134 pairs to just 12. In fact the species is red listed as a species of conservation concern in Britain by the British Trust for Ornithology.

The joint study by RSPB Scotland and Dr Adam Watson, published in the journal Ibis, found that gradual changes in crop management, particularly an increase in field size and decrease in weed abundance, reduced the availability of safe nesting sites and food sources the species depends on.

As cereal crops have become less weedy, more Corn Buntings may now be nesting in grass silage fields where they are especially vulnerable to harvesting operations. Researchers also determined the increase in field size reduced the availability of insect-rich field edge habitats and elevated song posts, such as fences, that males use when establishing and defending territories.

Dr Adam Watson, who monitored the Corn Bunting population in each year of the study said: “When I first studied this population in 1989 it was thriving, and I saw winter flocks hundreds strong. Last summer we only found one pair, which failed to rear any chicks. To me in 2012, the familiar farmlands seem silent and empty. It is tragic.”

Meanwhile, the RSPB in England has reported on successes on its Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire, where farmland birds are thriving.