If you see a hobby as it scoots through the hedgerows you will be doing really well!

In early February, thousands of farmers, gamekeepers and land managers around the UK are setting off across their fields to count the farmland birds that share their land as part of the 2023 Big Farmland Bird Count. You can join us at Grey Alders as we do our bit to count all the birds we can see on our farm.

This annual citizen science project is organised by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT). They ask us to spend half an hour checking in on our feathered friends, recording their numbers and submitting the results to the Trust. The aim is to encourage farmers and gamekeepers to support farmland birds and highlight the hard work already done by many of them to help reverse species’ declines. The count gives a vital national snapshot of the health of the UK’s birdlife.

We think half an hour is way too short. We’ll spend a couple of hours on Saturday morning 11th February from 10am to noon. Afterwards, we’ll enjoy some famous Grey Alders hospitality. All you need to do is be here. And the best way to do that is to book a room (make sure it includes 11th February!) and stay for the weekend. Book a room here.

Bird watchers here are always in their element. Apart from the usual crows, magpies, jackdaws, robins, blackbirds and house sparrows, we have noted starlings nesting in the trees, blue tit, coal tit and great tit, dunnock, wren and collared dove on the yard.  Around the farm we see wood pigeon, thrush, snipe, raven, buzzard, red kite, migrating geese, pied and yellow wagtail, chaffinch, goldfinch and bullfinch, swallow and house martin in summer, lark, meadow pipit, plover, jay, woodpecker, ducks and heron on the pond, and if you are really blessed, hobby speeding through the bushes. The experienced eye will no doubt amaze us with many more.