Every Spring the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) conducts the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) in which volunteers walk a transect recording the birds they see. This is done twice, four weeks apart between mid-April and early June, involving going out to a preset area of countryside. It charts the population trends of certain species and has been going for many years. This is the biggest survey for breeding birds and is an honour for birders to take part in. For a set of reasons this is the first time I have done the survey, which made it doubly important.
My transect was a long farm track that cut its way through a landscape of rape fields, with a heavily cropped hedge running alongside. The transect was just off the A1120, opposite Stonham Barns, home of the hawk and owl sanctuary, a quite area of unassuming countryside in mid-Suffolk. As the survey had to be done very early in the morning, I got there for six in the morning, I only really had one day off to do it, having to go work and stuff. Unfortunately on the day I chose to do the survey it was extremely foggy, with very little visibility. Part of the survey entails recording the birds in the distance, out to either side of the recorder as they walk along the transect. Then the walker records all the birds they see and hear as they walk down. Unfortunately I was hampered by the mist and I couldn't see into the distance, which kind of bummed out a lot of the survey. The fog graciously cleared up literally just after I finished the survey as things annoyingly do.
As you would expect from the habitat I described, an area of intensive farmland, the number of birds were low. My first WHITETHROAT of the Spring was recorded, some YELLOWHAMMERS and LINNETS were about, and lots of singing SKYLARKS. The most surprising sighting was a flock of 14 REDWING flying over. The cold Spring has kept a lot of winter birds hanging around later, but I didn't expect to see this winter thrush on a late April day. Even stranger was another flock, this time of 40 FIELDFARE, seen just outside of the survey area. Also around, also outside, were BUZZARDS and KESTRELS, usual birds of the countryside now.
Even further outside of the survey area large numbers of COWSLIPS and PRIMROSES had flowered along the hedgerow banks, that grew beside the footpath, providing a splash of yellow in the canvas of green, intensive farmland. Also two ROE DEER were seen, briefly running across the path I was walking, seen and gone in a flash.
As you would expect with a morning's birdwatching through intensive farmland, there wasn't a lot of birds to see. But still when you take part in a survey you really want to see as many birds as possible to show just how good you've been. But no matter how good a birdwatcher you are, if there aren't the birds to see there's nothing to record. And its like that pretty much throughout the countryside, silent places devoid of wildlife. And things are only getting worse.
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