Directed by Alastair Leake, the demonstration farm combines commercial food production with specialized techniques like direct-drilling crops into residual plant matter to keep food accessible for birds. The site also sustains populations through the winter with dedicated feeding strips and maintains grassy beetle banks to naturally reduce chemical pesticide use. Additionally, targeted control of predators such as foxes and crows during the nesting season helps safeguard vulnerable bird populations.
Key points
Direct-drilling crops keeps worms, seeds, and insects accessible to feeding birds instead…: Direct-drilling crops keeps worms, seeds, and insects accessible to feeding birds instead of burying them.
Establishing grassy beetle banks fosters predatory insects that lessen the need for chemi…: Establishing grassy beetle banks fosters predatory insects that lessen the need for chemical pesticide treatments.
Combining deliberate habitat management with seasonal predator control can reverse long-t…: Combining deliberate habitat management with seasonal predator control can reverse long-term wild bird declines on farms.
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Farmer Alastair Leake is standing in a field of sprouting winter wheat, pointing at his experiment. One side was ploughed before planting, with green shoots breaking through neat rows of upturned soil. On the other, the crop was drilled directly into the earth, emerging through a messy carpet of “trash” – stems, stubble and crop residue from previous harvests.
“When we’re watching to see where the birds are landing to feed, none of them are going on to the ploughed side,” says Leake, the director of the Allerton Project farm, standing on the trashy side. “They’re all coming and feeding down here.
“That’s because that’s where the seeds, the earthworms and the insects are. On the ploughed side, they’re all buried.”
It is experiments such as these that have enabled the Allerton Project to buck the decline in farm bird populations across the UK. Farm bird abundance at Allerton has risen 145% since 1992 when monitoring began, compared with a 23% decline nationally over the same period.
“This is not some study that’s been done overnight,” Leake says. “We can…
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